Footprints on the Road
The Midrash tells how Yirmiyahu followed the captives of Yerushalayim, kissing the footprints of the children, and then turned back to comfort those who remained.
The Midrash relates that when Yerushalayim fell, Yirmiyahu went out after the captives. As he walked he cried: which way did the sinners go, which way did the lost ones go? Let me go and be lost with them. The road was soaked with blood. He bent low and saw on the ground the small footprints of children and infants who had been marched into captivity, and he bent to the ground and kissed them.
When he caught up with the exiles he embraced them and kissed them, and they wept facing him and he wept facing them. My brothers, my people, he said, all this came upon you because you did not listen to the words of my prophecy.
When they reached the river Euphrates, the captain of the guard offered him a choice: come with me to Bavel, or go wherever you wish. Yirmiyahu thought: if I go with them to Bavel, who will comfort the exiles who are left behind in the land? He turned back. When the captives saw him leaving, they all broke into loud weeping: our father Yirmiyahu, are you leaving us? That, the Midrash says, is the weeping in the verse, by the rivers of Bavel, there we sat and wept. Yirmiyahu answered them: I call heaven and earth to witness, had you wept even one such weeping while you were still in Tziyon, you would never have gone into exile. And Yirmiyahu went on his way, weeping as he went.
Source: Pesikta Rabbati 26; Yirmiyahu 40:1–6. English: The JPS Tanakh (Gender-Sensitive Edition).
Yirmiyahu could have gone where he would be honored, but he chose the people no one else would comfort. Think of someone in your circle who has been left behind: a neighbor whose children have all moved away, a friend who did not get the job or the shidduch, a relative after the shivah visitors stopped coming. This week, go back for them. Visit, call, or invite them to your Shabbos table, and let them feel that someone chose to stay.