Baruch 4:27-37: in context

Baruch speaks tender comfort to a Jerusalem in exile and mourning. Take courage, my children, and cry to God, he says, for you will be remembered by the one who brought this upon you. As you chose to go astray from God, now return and seek him. He who brought these calamities upon you will bring you everlasting joy again. Take courage, O Jerusalem, for he who called you by name will comfort you. And he bids the mourning city look east and behold the joy coming from God, her scattered children gathered home.

This is a word of comfort to the afflicted, and its tenderness is worth receiving. To a people in the depths of exile, mourning their losses, feeling forgotten and forsaken, Baruch speaks not condemnation but comfort: take courage; you will be remembered; he who called you by name will comfort you. And notice the striking thing he says: the one who brought this affliction is the very one who will bring the joy. He who brought these calamities upon you will bring you everlasting joy again with your salvation. The God whose discipline they were feeling was not their enemy but their Father, and his purpose was not their destruction but their restoration; the same hand that let the sorrow come would turn it, in the end, to joy. There is comfort here for the afflicted and grieving. When we are in the depths, mourning, feeling forgotten, it can seem that God has forsaken us, that our affliction is the end of the story. Baruch's word says otherwise: take courage; you are remembered; he who called you by name will comfort you. The God who has let the sorrow come is the God who will bring the joy; the affliction is not his last word to his people. He calls us by name, knows us in our grief, and his purpose, even through the hard discipline, is to comfort and restore, to turn our mourning at last to joy. Comfort my people, God says elsewhere; and to those who mourn he gives the oil of joy for mourning. If we are in an affliction that feels like abandonment, Baruch's word is for us: take courage, for the God who called you by name has not forgotten you, and he who let the sorrow come will bring the joy. Look east, the prophet says to mourning Jerusalem, and behold the joy that comes from God; and the same God who turned that city's mourning to joy is at work, even in our afflictions, to comfort and restore his own.

When I am in the depths, afflicted and mourning, feeling forgotten and forsaken by God, can I receive Baruch's tender word to exiled Jerusalem, take courage, for he who called you by name will comfort you, and trust that the God who has let the sorrow come is the same God who will bring the joy, and that my affliction is not his last word to me?