When life is bitter pill – Advent Psalms of Lament, Part 2

This week I welcome guest blogger, Jeff Byerly. Jeff is my pastoral colleague, friend, ThD classmate, and traveling partner! He and his wife Tasha have two daughters, a son-in-law and new grandbaby!

As I mentioned in the previous post, we will turn our hearts toward lament in order to turn our heads upward toward God’s perspectives. Now we begin by looking at Psalm 137. Please read it, then come back and continue this post.

Isn’t that just some of the most uplifting prose and beautiful imagery to be recorded in Israel’s memoirs and our Scriptures? {Wink}

Consider just the first line: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.”

We will get to some of that imagery soon enough, but let me ask you: How does that psalm make you feel?

Laments draw attention to what’s wrong in our worlds! They present our pain, confusion, and anger with raw intensity.

So let’s unpack this psalm to see what is going on.

Perhaps you didn’t catch it, but the psalmist is not in Israel, but instead dwells in Babylon, sitting by rivers—the Euphrates, or perhaps the Tigris.

He is not on vacation! He is not visiting his relatives. He is a prisoner or hostage of war!

He has been relocated about 700 miles away from his home.

Everything that is familiar to his life in Israel is being de-programmed in order to become a good citizen of Babylon.

So in this opening to the psalm, the psalmist longs for his home—and he thinks about Zion’s hill.

What is the cause of such weeping and mourning?

Up on Zion’s hill, we find the Temple, (and now for the psalmist, it is in shambles, because the Babylonians have completely destroyed it.)

The importance of the Temple cannot be over-estimated, for it was not only a place of worship, but for Israel it was where one would locate YHWH himself—within the Holy of Holies.

The psalmist is lamenting the fact that his seasonal trips to Jerusalem to visit the Temple are no longer going to take place—in other words, he is not only removed from his home, his family, his people, and everything familiar, he is especially cut off from his God!!! He is 700 miles away, sitting by the waters of a strange river in a strange land.

They are so discouraged that they have given up playing their harps—they hand them on the poplars and stop singing their favorite songs.

How do you feel now? Sorrowful? Confused? Angry? Helpless?

Perhaps the sting would go away if they could find some comfort in their new home…however, their captors were not so kind.

“Hey there, former citizen of Judah, sing me one of those special songs about Zion. You know, one of those songs that talks about the power of your God to vanquish his enemies.”

Ouch! That’s some pretty, nasty smack talk. It’s worse than watching your football team get clobbered and then your opponent getting up your grill to taunt you.

Perhaps you have felt that same sting in some of your encounters in your societal interactions—especially on social media.

Perhaps you feel it at work, with another employee who just became your supervisor, after they landed the job you propositioned for.

Perhaps you see it in politics, after an election when the other side experiences a wave that sweeps over the country.

And some family member at the Thanksgiving table doesn’t want to let it go and they say: “Sing us one of your songs of Zion!” as they taunt you and smile.

Now, how do you feel? Frustrated? Exasperated? Defeated? Hopeless?

We swallow a bitter pill. And if we are not careful, that bitterness can permeate our entire perspective. We can carry that frustration into the other arenas of our lives. Where does that leave us? What are we to do? How can we sing the songs of the LORD in a foreign land?

In the next post, we’ll learn how.

Photo by Pars Sahin on Unsplash