The news today carries the particular ache of watching suffering unfold—disease spreading across continents, families caught in violence, people deported to danger, lives lost in accident and conflict. There is no political solution offered here, no negotiation that stops the virus or brings back the dead. Yet the ancient words of Lamentations do not counsel us to look away or to pretend there are easy answers. Instead, they invite us into a harder work: to hold both the full weight of affliction and a stubborn, tested hope. That hope does not deny the wormwood; it emerges only after we have truly remembered it, allowed ourselves to be humbled by what we cannot fix. In a world where so much suffering persists despite our efforts, we are invited to witness it truly, to let it humble us, and to ask what mercy still lies within our reach.