By the rivers of Babylon, / There we sat down; indeed, we wept / When we remembered Zion. On the willows in the midst of it / We hung up our lyres, For there our captors required of us songs, / And those who tormented us required of us mirth, saying, / Sing for us / One of the songs of Zion. (Psalm 137:1-3)
God’s people had returned from their shameful captivity. They were home. But for some reason they stopped to look back and remember this sorrowful moment. They had been demanded by their Babylonian captors to sing a song of Zion, but they could not bring themselves to do so while they were in a foreign land (v. 4). So they hung up their lyres on willows by the rivers of Babylon. “Willows of the brook” were to be for rejoicing before Jehovah during the feast of Tabernacles after the harvest, but now they were silent.
This sweet song of remembering is also our own, for we, too, are foreigners in this land (Heb. 11:9). Since our dear Lord parted from us at Bethany (Luke 24:50-51), there has been a deep void and longing within all the lovers of Christ throughout these generations. But “for everything there is a season” (Eccl. 3:1). Just as the Jewish captives were eventually brought back to their home, so the Lord also has His own ordained course to reap His harvest and bring us home to “tabernacle” with Him. We also are on the path of repenting, returning, remembering, and rejoicing. In the book of Revelation, we see the overcoming believers standing on Mount Zion and playing their harps. They are not silent, but have “the sound of loud thunder” (Rev 14:1-2)! Today in the church, our hope is that we are His overcomers, no longer mourning, but experiencing the first fruits of this harvest now. Our churching is both remembering and rejoicing: in one sense, we are longing for our homeland, but in another, by faith, we are already on Mount Zion.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 7/21/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)