Psalm 137: 1-2 / 4
By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign Land?
Here we have the lament of a people taken into captivity to live as slaves. Taken away from everything they know, everything that brought them comfort and forced to live in a land that was foreign to them.
They have "hung up their harps." They have ceased to worship God. Now let it be known that the reason this people were taken away is because of their sin against God. They forgot their "first love" and turned to the gods of the nations around them. They became ungrateful for what God had done for them. They cast off the instruction of God to pursue the lust of their own imagination. Here, at the river Chebar, in a foreign land they have given up.
Yet there is such a contrast that we read in Scripture between what is going on in Psalm 137 and what is going on with a single man who is among those who are lamenting their lot in life.
A man.....a priest who never got to serve in that office was among the captives there by the Chebar river. We read his words in Ezekiel 1:1 - "I was among the captives by the river Chebar that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God."
He was not mourning or weeping. Ezekiel was not fixed or focused on his past. He was focused on a "now" moment. God revealed Himself to Ezekiel in ways that no other prophet had seen. What an amazing contrast between these two. One group of captives who mourned over what they had lost and where they currently were, and a man (in the middle of the captives) who saw the heavens opened.
Where are you today? Are you trapped by where your past deeds have brought you to? Are you sitting and mourning over what might have been? Is darkness and depression causing you to give up? Like the captives do you proclaim your inability to worship God? Or are you going to detach yourself from your past and allow God to open the heavens for you? No one is saying that you'll be able to forget the past or the things that you have done, but what I am saying is that God, through your confession and repentance, will frame your memories in such a way that they do not bring guilt and shame to you. I know! He has done this for me.
You can choose to sit and mourn in your current state, or you can call out to God and see your salvation. I choose this day to accept the goodness of God and move on in my life. I choose to serve Him in whatever capacity He might have for me today. As I heard one man say, "It doesn't matter if your taking a nap, cleaning the toilet or raising the dead, with God it all pays the same."
Don't allow your current place in life to drag you down and destroy you. Cry out to God and He will answer you!
Psalm 138:7
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me. You will stretch out Your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and Your right hand will save me.
That is a promise...
God on you.....
mb
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