Lamentations 3:18-21

Lamentations 3:18-21. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

Notice that, in all his sorrow, this man still had hope. His soul was humbled, and therefore he had hope. I think that, in the New Zealand language, the word for hope is "swimming thought" - the thought that swims when everything else is drowned. Oh, what a mercy it is that hope can live on when all things else appear to die!