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? By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows. The request that produced the question came from the men who had marched them 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 are asking it too, God, and not as a figure of speech. Some of us are required to produce the cheerful version by the people who did the damage. Say something encouraging. Give the testimony. Do the one about how good he has been to you, and be quick, the room is waiting. We have sung it, and driven home afterwards not knowing what it was we did in there.
And we have read to the end of the psalm, which we would rather you had not kept. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. It was written by survivors of a sacked city, and the line above it says as thou hast served us, so they are describing what they watched. We will not pretend we have never wanted such a sentence for somebody. What they did with it is the part we can follow: they said it to you, and asked you to remember Edom, and left it in your hands.
Nothing about this psalm was tidied for publication. The songbook of the people of God contains a refusal to sing, filed with the music, and neither the refusal nor the rage at the end was edited out. So, at the very least, you are under no obligation to produce mirth on demand for anybody. The flat honest question asked upward is already one of the songs of Zion. It is in the collection, it has a number, and it has been sung for two and a half thousand years.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 309 is Free from Sin (Romans 8:2).