Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 309 · November 5
In a Strange Land
“How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?”
"How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?" The psalm sets the scene: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof." And the demand that led to the question came from the very men who had marched them there: "For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion."
So we ask the question too, Lord, and we mean it. Some of us are expected to produce the cheerful version, sometimes by the very people who did the damage. Say something encouraging, they tell us. Give your testimony, tell us how good He has been to you, and be quick, because the room is waiting. We have sung it, and we have driven home afterwards not knowing what we did in there.
We have also read to the end of the psalm, and we wish You had not kept the last line: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." It was written by survivors of a city that had been sacked, and the line before it says, "as thou hast served us," so they are describing what they watched happen. We will not pretend we have never wanted a sentence like that for somebody. What they did with it is the part we can follow. They said it to You. They prayed, "Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom," and they left it in Your hands.
Nothing in this psalm was tidied up before it went into Your book. The songbook of Your people contains a refusal to sing, filed with the music, and neither the refusal nor the rage at the end was edited out. So we thank You that we do not have to produce cheerfulness on demand for anybody. An honest question, asked up to You, is already one of the songs of Zion. It is in the collection, and Your people have sung it for two and a half thousand years. You heard it by the rivers of Babylon, and You hear it from us now. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 309 is Free from Sin (Romans 8:2).