NOTES for Bar 1:15-22
How much strength it takes to communicate with someone on whose side there is truth, when on your side there is shame. And not only to communicate. To come and ask forgiveness is hard enough. And how hard it is to accept forgiveness. How much one has to overcome within oneself in order then to continue communicating with, being friends with, or loving a person on whose side there is truth, when on your side there is shame. And if this situation repeats itself day after day? The natural human reaction to this is flight. One wants to find a place where nothing reminds one of shame over oneself. A place where one can at least avoid seeing the person one hates because that person lets one see oneself without embellishment.
One can leave a person, one can try to forget everything and start everything over, hoping it will not happen again. But where can one go from God? After all, on only one side of the coin is written, "To the Lord our God belongs righteousness, but to us shame." On the other side one can read no less plainly: "Whoever rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me." This does not deprive us of the ability to choose how and with whom we will live, but it shows us very clearly what pit we will fall into if we decide after all to live without God.