| “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps.” |
| —Psalm 137:1-2 |
We don’t know who from the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem wrote the words in the Scripture passage above. The Bible tells us that the walls of Jerusalem had been torn down, the Temple burned, and all the articles of worship used there were carried away to Babylon. We also know that this enemy abducted the chief priest and others who worked in the Temple.
All of the people mourned at the loss of their homeland and the loss of their beloved Temple. But, no one mourned as much as those who had regularly prepared for the rituals of worship in the Temple and who had daily served and led in the worship of Jehovah, the One True God.
In the passage of Scripture above, we can clearly hear the heartbreak that they felt. From their land of captivity in Bablylon, they had lost all they had known and loved, including their music that led them in worship. Their hearts simply could no longer sing the songs they once knew, so in great sadness, they hung up their harps.
What did the Babylonians require of these Jewish exiles, who probably served as slaves in whatever capacity the enemy could conjure up? And, how could the Jewish exiles possibly respond to the taunts of their captives, while they labored under these wicked taskmasters? It was a simple fact that the exiles could no longer worship freely, nor could they experience the joy in worship that they had once known so well in Jerusalem.
Tell me, dear ones, at least for a season has the Lord asked you to “hang up your harp”? Has a twist of fate taken your familiar and gifted service to God from you? Have the people you once joyfully served moved on without you? Has your family forced you out of the nest? Have they given your beloved job to someone younger? Have you had to trade your familiar home with its cozy kitchen for retirement living?
Has God asked you, by this unwanted development in your life, to serve Him in another role—one for which you feel totally unprepared or ill-equipped? It is an all-too-common fact that sometimes God takes us away from the familiar so that we might learn a hard, but necessary, lesson from Him.
Consider Moses, who grew up in the palace in Egypt, but later was forced to flee at the age of forty into the desert to tend sheep for yet another forty years. We know that eventually God called Moses out of the desert and back to Egypt to negotiate with the king for the release of the entire nation of God’s chosen people. Looking back from a new perspective, we can clearly see that God had a reason for taking Moses’ “harp” from him.
We learn in Psalm 126 that the Jewish people taken captive into Babylon did indeed return to Jerusalem after seventy years. Once back in their homeland, God again filled their mouths with songs of worship. Psalm 126:1-2 tells us:
“When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.”
Once again, God made use of the harps that for seventy years had hung on those poplars. As we consider this incident recorded in Scripture, we can come to realize that God also may allow us to once again take up our own “harps.” Or, He may teach us how to play and sing using a different “instrument.”
Whatever He chooses to do, we know that God does all things well. Though we may not sing the same songs of joy we once did, God will surely give us the grace to once again make music through our lives. We simply need to allow Him to make the choice!
