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Day 226, or August the 14th. Learn from your own mistakes.

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Our thoughts today come from Lamentations chapter 1 verse 18.

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The LORD is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Listen, all you peoples! Look

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on my suffering! My young men and young women have gone into exile.

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And now the big picture surrounding this verse. The Book of Lamentations is generally recognized

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as having been written by the prophet Jeremiah. It's a song or funeral dirge, written in

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a particularly memorable format, so it could be learned and either recited or sung as a

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permanent reminder of what happened to the once glorious city of Jerusalem. Beginning

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each chapter with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, it progresses verse by verse

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through the entire alphabet. Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 each have 22 verses, which is the

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number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The third chapter has 3 verses for each letter,

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and therefore has 66 in total. The Book laments the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent

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anger of God, with the central chapter being dominated by prayer from Jeremiah. It finishes

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with a prayer of restoration.

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And now our action step for today. Taking advice and learning from other people's

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mistakes can be difficult, but learning from your own mistakes isn't always easy either.

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Many of the Jews, as they were taken away into exile, must have been thinking, if only

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I had learned from my mistakes before this calamity happened. If you only need to make

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a mistake once before learning its lesson, you are a rare person indeed. Truly learning

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lessons from your own mistakes will save us from repeating them. We parents know how disappointing

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it is when our children come back to us saying, sorry, for the same old mistakes over and

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over again. There is a distinct whiff of insincerity. With the Holy Spirit's help today, let's

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do our best not to make the same mistakes, but rather fill those periods of time doing

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good and encouraging others to do the same.