Lamentations

Lamentations 1:1 states:

How deserted lies the city,
   once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
   who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces
   has now become a slave. 

I've always had an odd fascination with this verse because of the vivid imagery it presents. To illustrate, I'll use three examples.

The first is a National Historic Landmark located just outside of St. Louis, the Cahokia Mounds (for more, check the Wikipedia article). At its peak, it had a population of around 15,000 people and was the cultural center for the area. It was the largest earthen construction north of Mexico, and around 1400, the population disappeared. Numerous theories have been put forth (deforestation, over-hunting, war) but nothing definitive has been determined. Below is a picture of the main mound. How deserted lies the city, once so full of people...

My next example is the Mayans, the predominant civilization in what is now Central American prior to  the arrival of Spanish colonizers, but even by the time the Spanish arrived, the Mayans had been in decline for hundreds of years. At their peak, they inhabited what is now Honduras, Guatemala, parts of El Salvador and as far north as central Mexico, but again, for inexplicable reasons, they declined (but never fully disappeared) as a civilization. You can read more about them in this Wikipedia article. How deserted lies the city, once so full of people...

My last example I just ran across today as I was doing some research for a potential future Bible class. It regards Ephesus, a major city in the time of Paul. It was such an important city that it was a recipient of one of John's seven letters in Revelation (take the hint), indeed, the first one. At that time, it was a city of over 250,000 people full of temples to various gods and a theater that could seat 25,000 people. It was widely considered the largest and most influential church in Paul's time, which is why he sent Timothy to be its pastor. However, even then, it was beginning to decline--it had a harbor that was filling in with silt, and by 500 AD, it was deserted, since the former harbor city was by then miles inland. How deserted lies the city, once so full of people...

Nothing lasts forever, nothing is guaranteed. Six of the seven ancient wonders of the world are long gone, any review of population trends in the United States shows a steady move from the northeast to the southwest, and even in Davenport, we can see population steadily moving to the north and east. Nothing stays the same, but this simple verse in Lamentations is still poignant and touching. God had predicted this day as far back as the time of Moses, and had sent no fewer than eight prophets (and possibly more--by my count, this would be Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel) to warn them, but it's still sad to consider that these people, these stubborn, stiff-necked people, had to watch the utter destruction of their city and enter a 70-year exile in order to return to God.

Someday our city will be deserted, either by choice or design. For those that were there and recall, last Labor Day Sunday, Pastor Warnsholz did a sermon titled (something like) "Reflections of an Old Church Pew." It was a reminder to us that nothing stays the same in this life and we should always be prepared to meet new challenges and obstacles as they arise, because they will. The people of Israel were warned over and over again what they were doing was wrong AND what would happen as a result, but they ignored the message. We've been blessed with the opportunity to see past their mistakes and not make the same ones. In fact, that's the primary job of Christians--finding those people who don't have Christ in their lives and warning them that some day, their "city" too will be deserted--but it doesn't have to be.

Scott