Baruch 3:1-8: in context

From the depths of exile, Baruch's prayer rises: O Lord Almighty, the soul in anguish and the troubled spirit cries to you. Hear, and have mercy, for we have sinned before you. And amid the confession comes a striking recognition of what the captivity had accomplished in them: you have put your fear in our hearts, that we should call upon your name; we will praise you in our captivity. The very affliction of exile, painful as it was, had turned their hearts back to God, teaching them to call on him and even to praise him from the place of their captivity.

The insight in this prayer is that their affliction had turned them back to God. In their prosperity, they had forgotten him, gone their own way, not listened to his voice. It was the captivity, the affliction, the loss, that turned their hearts back, that put the fear of God in them, that taught them to call on his name. What they had not done in comfort, they did in affliction: they cried to God, confessed their sin, turned back to him. The exile was painful, a real judgment; and yet God used it to draw them back to himself, so that they could even say, we will praise you in our captivity. This reveals a redemptive purpose God can work through affliction. We do not welcome affliction, and Scripture does not pretend it is not painful. But affliction can accomplish what comfort does not: it can turn us back to God when prosperity had let us drift, put the fear of God in hearts grown careless, teach us to call on him when we had forgotten to. Before I was afflicted, the psalmist says, I went astray, but now I keep your word; it is good for me that I was afflicted. The very hardship we would never choose can be the means by which God draws us back to himself. In their distress, God says through Hosea, they will earnestly seek me. This does not make affliction good in itself, nor does it explain every suffering; but it holds out hope that God can work through our afflictions to turn us back to him. When we are in some captivity of our own, some hardship or loss, we can ask whether God is using it to draw us back to himself, and we can do what the exiles did: cry to him, confess, turn back, and even learn to praise him from the place of our affliction. We will praise you in our captivity, they said; their hardship had become the place where they found God again. And our own afflictions, painful as they are, can become the place where we turn back to God, learn to call on his name, and even come to praise him, drawn back to himself by the very thing we would never have chosen.

When I am in some affliction or loss, do I see it only as painful, or can I ask, as the exiles did, whether God is using it to turn me back to himself, drawing me to call on his name as their captivity taught them to, and can I do what they did, crying to him, confessing, turning back, and even learning to praise him from the place of my affliction, drawn back to God by the very thing I would never have chosen?