Psalm 137

“How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?” (4). The exiled Israelites mourned their destroyed homeland and wondered how they could worship God in Babylon, a foreign and pagan land. Their lament echoes the grief of all human loss: the loss of home, a loved one, a relationship, or a dream. The exiles remembered Jerusalem as their “highest joy” (6), yet, according to Scripture, physical Jerusalem was only a “shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1).

“We remembered Zion” (1). Our deepest joys and longings on earth – and our grief - point us toward the “city of the living God”, where we will be at home forever (Hebrews 12:22).