“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger” (Lamentations 1:12).

This heartbroken lament, uttered by Jeremiah, the “weeping prophet,” personifies the devastated city of Jerusalem after the Babylonian invasion. She who had been “beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, . . . the city of the great King” (Psalm 48:2), now lay in ruins, and neither the triumphant armies who had ravished her nor the careless peoples living around her cared at all that this was the city of God being chastised for her unfaithfulness.

Many Christians have, at times, felt alone and confused, longing for someone who would care, saying with the psalmist: “There was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul” (Psalm 142:4). But no one has ever been so alone or has suffered so intensely and so unjustly as the one who was the very “Man of Sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3). He was “smitten of God, and afflicted” in the day of God’s fierce anger, for “the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4,6).

Just as there were those who passed by suffering Jerusalem, some gloating and others unconcerned, so there were those who passed by and viewed the suffering Savior as He hung on the cross. “And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads” (Matthew 27:39).

There are multitudes who still pass Him by today. Some revile Him; many ignore Him, altogether uncaring that He loved them and even died to save them. Soon, however, “every eye shall see Him, . . . and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him” (Revelation 1:7). Their indifference will be turned quickly into mourning, in that day. “Is it nothing to you?” the Lord would ask. HMM