Weeping While the Harps are Silent

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem.  We put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees.  For our captors demanded a song from us.  Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn:  “Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!”  But how can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a pagan land?  Psalm 137:1-4

I kinda know how the Psalmist felt…captured, caught, defeated, deflated of any hope that the future will get better.  There are millions of scenarios you could draw from the history of human experience to match the pathos of a soul caught in weeping, unable to sing, or even manage a faint shadow of a smile.  All tragedy (and even humor) arises out of the difficulties of life. 

It's impossible (for me) to talk about trouble without remembering that Job said we humans were born for it, just as certainly as the sparks fly upward from a fire.[1]  Each week in untold numbers of churches across the world, hands are raised to call a name in prayer.  These requests are the communication of the compassion of Christians for believers and unbelievers alike.  We pray for all sorts of illnesses, surgeries, accidents, and war victims.  We pray for a myriad of life’s mayhem and mourning.  And then, we’ll sing a hymn.  Often a joyful one. 

The point is, nobody likes to stay in the dark too long.  We want to be lifted by brighter thoughts and posssibilities.  And thus it is ever – we pray against the dark, drawing hope against the extant shadows.  But sometimes our darkness sings a joyful song as if it were a funeral dirge.  We know the words, but have sadly lost the joy of the melody.

According to the Psalmist, it was worse than that for the former residents of Jerusalem.  They’d been defeated politically; their homeland decimated by the unstoppable armies of Babylon, and all their young people carried off to the enemy’s homeland, to serve as slaves.  Not much to celebrate there.  It was time to hang the harps on the tree branches – there would be no happy songs with which to sing and dance.  Life was going to be one long, dreary treadmill; the only relief would be the graveyard.  That certainly would not be the advertisement you’re looking for on a travel brochure!

Jeremiah understood the national mood of the captives, and their weeping.  It’s not stretching the truth when I say most Christians understand that profile in our day, even though we still live in a land of relative prosperity and personal freedom, greater than many countries in the world.  We still celebrate remnants of a Christian national heritage.  However, truth be told, we can also see the gathering storm clouds, a darkening horizon of godlessness in this worldly culture.  We have moved past the God is Dead stage of the 1960’s to the next-worse stage; we have entered the age of God is Irrelevant!  And…God help us…if that is an accurate forecast, we are in the Days of Noah, just waiting for the flood of judgment’s hammer to fall.

For You Today

If there is one thing I have learned about dark times, it is that it is proof that God’s promises are true, and always kept.  It matters little what cultural trends want to proclaim…God is never irrelevant…He is patient, but even that will end some day.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Boiling Point   and   Joy in Troubling Times   

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Job 5:7

He Began to Weep

 

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep.  “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace.  But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.  Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side.  They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you.  Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”  Luke 19:41-44

Jesus was close to finishing his journey to the cross.  As he approached Jerusalem, he wept for the sheep he would have shepherded…if they’d only been willing.  From the depths of his sorrow tears flowed, and the Lord of Glory poured out the pain of the coming recompense his family would suffer.  Jerusalem, the shining City of David, would be crushed, its walls and temple razed to ground-zero.  Men and women, along with their children would enter a trial that would leave them devastated and broken.  God had visited them from a manger in Bethlehem…and they put up a shield to ward Him off.  Instead, it would become a prison wall to an eternal sentence of death.  Peace rejected, destruction ensured, the tears flowed like a river from the Christ who would be Savior over the lambs who were blindly bleating their own destructive brand of independence…we don’t need YOU, God!

Frankly, it’s difficult to read those words of prophecy…senseless destruction of men, women, and children, broken, bloodied, crushed into the ground.  That is the awful truth about rebellion towards our Creator.  When we decide to go our own way, rejecting God’s loving hand, we do to ourselves the worst kind of judgment – an unnecessary suffering contrary to what God had planned for us. 

Rather than pain, anguish, and eternal death, the LORD holds for us eternal LIFE and joy.  In human understanding, we hardly begin to comprehend that loss.  It is like a little boy playing on the railroad tracks.  He enjoys hopping from one rail to the rocks and skipping-up to the other rail.  His dad calls, but the child is having too good a time, so he ignores the voice.  What a tragedy is coming; but the child cannot see the danger, so His father and mother weep for him.  He’s making the worst possible choice, and refuses to take his eyes off his game for a moment.

Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, is not the focus of this Scripture.  Jerusalem is a metaphor for everything God created.  All the earth, it’s people, animals, cities, rural areas, mountains, wilderness, and dry places, were created for God’s glory.  And all was placed in humankind’s care.  Some of us choose to play on the tracks, ignoring the train’s approaching destruction.  Some turn to the voice of God’s warning to come close for protection.  And, as the story of the Great Shepherd who left the 99 safe sheep[1], to look for the 1 lost sheep still playing on the tracks, the heart of the Father grieves just as Jesus’ weeping displays…because they would not.

For You Today

For some, the idea of getting right with God is not something by which they’re upset, or angered; they’re just buried in the distraction of living daily life.  They just don’t think about it.  Sadly, this was the case in Jerusalem; the king of glory visited, and they were too busy playing on the tracks.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

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[1] See Luke 15:1-7

Boiling Point

[i]

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Then the Lord spoke to me again and asked, “What do you see now?”  And I replied, “I see a pot of boiling water, spilling from the north.”  “Yes,” the Lord said, “for terror from the north will boil out on the people of this land.  Listen! I am calling the armies of the kingdoms of the north to come to Jerusalem.  I, the Lord, have spoken!  “They will set their thrones at the gates of the city.  They will attack its walls and all the other towns of Judah.  I will pronounce judgment on my people for all their evil—for deserting me and burning incense to other gods.  Yes, they worship idols made with their own hands!  “Get up and prepare for action.  Go out and tell them everything I tell you to say.  Do not be afraid of them, or I will make you look foolish in front of them.  For see, today I have made you strong like a fortified city that cannot be captured, like an iron pillar or a bronze wall.  You will stand against the whole land—the kings, officials, priests, and people of Judah.  They will fight you, but they will fail.  For I am with you, and I will take care of you.  I, the Lord, have spoken!”  

Jeremiah 1:13-19(NLT)

Samaria and Judah, the two kingdoms of Israel in the 8^th century (B.C.) were an “America kind of place”.  I characterize Israel that way because theirs was an affluent and powerful dynasty, rich in gold and possessions, with a reputation of being God’s people, respected and feared by their enemies.  It was an era where the Hebrew children of Yahweh knew they had the world by the tail!

Enter Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and all the other iah’s, and in 724BC the northern kingdom was conquered and taken into captivity by the Assyrians.  Roughly one hundred years later Jeremiah pointed back to the North and said:  Do you remember your northern neighbors?  Do you not realize the same thing will come down on your heads…for the same reason…you’ve ignored God, and He will judge you for that?  Get ready; the pot is about to boil!

It didn’t happen that same day Jeremiah preached his sermon…but 40 years later the next generation (in 587BC) experienced Babylonian fury, and the fall of the southern kingdom.  The pot boiled over…just like Jeremiah warned it would!

Many people shake their heads thinking how unfortunate, bad luck for Israel.  Friends, look closely at the words which GOD had spoken about how this was going to happen:

Listen! I am calling the armies of the kingdoms of the north to come to Jerusalem. I, the Lord, have spoken!  Jeremiah 1:15(NLT)

This was not bad luck or misfortune…this was God making good on His promise.  And when the Babylonians and Assyrians swept over the lands God had given to His people, the devastation was overwhelming; just ask the Psalmist:

Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem.       We put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees.  

Psalm 137:1-2(NLT)

There were no goose bumps for the national anthem singing in Israel, no parades for the victorious warriors returning home.  The good life in the fast lane was history, along with fortunes, power, and world-class prestige.  Israel, born out of slavery to a land of milk and honey, was back where they started, slaves to the Arab world once again.  The state of the union address in those days was written with a black pen, on black paper, under a black cloud, picturing a bleak future.  God had spoken; then God acted, and those who refused to serve God, those who had rejected God, were rejected by God.

And I’m not certain our nation, born out of the struggle for freedom from religious persecution and the heavy hand of oppressors of a ruthless British Empire, has learned that lesson any more than those who received that lesson from Moses, the one who heard it directly from a burning bush.

For You Today

If there is any truth to the Scripture, and the fact that history repeats, and that God should be obeyed, not ignored, and if we love our children, and our children’s children, it is time for all people, especially America, to return to obeying and honoring God with our lives, not just our lips.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:  via Wikimedia Commons