Praise Him?

I don’t know if you use any kind of daily notes to help you read the Bible, but Rob and I try to read the New Daylight notes each day. It’s always good to be encouraged to think about a particular part of the Bible and benefit from the way that the various contributors reflect on it, but there are some days when it feels like a particular passage or reflection stands out more than others.

This week our notes have been looking at Ezekiel speaking to the Israelites in exile in Babylon, and one morning there was a section from Psalm 137, which is a Psalm remembering the destruction of Jerusalem and the experience of exile. It got me thinking and it has stuck in my head this week, so I thought I’d share my reflections with you.

The start of the Psalm (v1-6) says this:

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’

How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? If I forget you O Jerusalem may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy."

The phrase that has really stuck with me this week is the line ‘How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?’ The Israelites were in exile in a strange land and they were mourning for what they had lost. At the moment, it perhaps feels like we are in something of a strange land, missing much of what is familiar and the people and places that are important to us. Whilst of course it is good to be as positive as we can, it’s also OK to sit and weep if that’s what we are feeling sometimes. It’s OK if we don’t feel like singing.

The Israelites’ captors were asking them to sing as entertainment what for the Israelites were songs of worship to God. They were not something that could be sung on demand.

We don’t have to be forced to sing at the moment, but how brilliant would it be if we could get to a place where we want to sing, because it’s authentic – not just as music, as worship from the heart?

How do we get to that place? It will probably be different for each of us. The Israelites might not have been able to sing, but they hadn’t forgotten God. In verses 5-6, ‘If I forget you O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill, may my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy’. It’s worth remembering that for the Israelites, Jerusalem was not just a city, but the dwelling place of God in the temple, the heart of God’s promise to them. And it’s interesting to note, as one commentary does, that the Israelites hadn’t destroyed their harps, only hung them up.

If we’re feeling a bit overwhelmed and like we’ve hung up our harps on some days at the moment, then remembering what God is like - his unchanging character - and his past faithfulness to us is a good starting point for being able to worship from the heart again. For me, it seems like the Psalms are full of ‘buts’ – moments of despair, which the Psalmist doesn’t shy away from, but then often in the same Psalm a statement of who God is, and what he’s done in the past “But you O Lord…”– a reason to praise.

So this week, perhaps we can turn that phrase that’s stuck in my head ‘How can we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land?’ from a despairing, rhetorical question to a question that we want to answer – how can we sing the songs of the Lord in what feels like a foreign land? And let’s ask God, by his Spirit, to help us answer it. He is good, and faithful, even (or perhaps especially) in these strange times, and my prayer is that we would surprise ourselves with our ability to sing the song of the Lord wholeheartedly.

As an aside, if you have read this and then go away and read all of Psalm 137, I thought I should probably just mention the last two verses. It seems pretty horrendous – “Oh Daughter of Babylon, deemed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them on the rocks”. It’s a rather unpleasant, vindictive end to the Psalm. Apparently, it was the norm for heathen armies to mercilessly destroy women and children when they had captured a city, and it’s likely that it’s what had happened to Jerusalem. The Psalmist’s call for revenge in such a graphic way is, apparently, them calling for a proportionate retribution. It’s another indicator that the Psalms are a good place to realise that our whole range of emotions are acceptable before God, but we should also read that last part of the passage in the light of New Testament teaching where we are called to love our enemies and trust in God’s judgement rather than taking revenge!

By Anna S