Our lyres cannot stay put up forever

I walked into work with a heavy heart. Friends have seen family members pass away, I sat under an overwhelming list of tasks, and the world just felt heavy. Among the typical kitchen noise, my coworkers were rejoicing at many new opportunities and exciting life changes. I recalled the words “rejoice with those who rejoice,” but I did not feel even a little bit like rejoicing. Among the heaviness, I felt I could not muster a laugh, or even a smile. The heaviness came at me from every direction like tormentors, and so did the joy. Even from within my own hurting bones and muscles, hurt attacked my soul. Even in the laughs of my friends that I would normally revel in, I found pain.
Within a psalm I have often overlooked, I found fellow mourners. Psalm 137 is a psalm of the Babylonian captivity. The captives wept at the remembrance of God’s land, the land they were taken from. They hung up their instruments, because how could they sing in a time of such mourning? How could they sing a song of the Lord in what feels like such a godless place? They pray they would even forget how to sing and play if they forget Jerusalem, and with it, God’s faithfulness to bring them there. At the end, they call destruction upon Babylon, the nation that captured them. Blessed will be those who repay them for their evil.
There was no people group in charge of my suffering (and even if there were, it would never be to the point of praying for their death), but there is sin that causes my heart to hate and hurt. There is physical pain that causes my joints to ache. There is sickness and death that steals loved ones from people far too early.
  I and the brothers and sisters around me are in a sort of captivity to suffering. We cannot escape it. So there are times where we hang up our lyres (or our aprons, or tools, or backpacks), and we sit down to weep. How can we sing in such a godless place? How can we sing a song of rejoicing when all we want to do is weep?
         Even though the captives cannot sing a song of old, they sing a new song here. Maybe we can’t sing an old song with dancing and joyful cries, but we can pray that we never forget God’s past faithfulness and call on him to destroy death and sin forever. He will. We cry out to him in our need, and he sustains us through the captivity and into eternal glory. We will meet the psalmists there with the songs of old, because our lyres cannot stay put up forever.

Psalm 137

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
 On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
 For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD’s song
in a foreign land?
 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

Of Psalm 137

At the very end of my ability,
I sat down and wept
Remembering the joy that was.
I hung up my guitar,
my apron, and all my cheerful songs with them,
for there the tormentors required of me songs.
“Laugh, child! Sing us a joyful song!”
How shall I sing the Lord’s old songs
In this place of evil and suffering?
If I forget the Lord’s faithfulness,
Let me lose all my words.
Let me forget how to write.
Let my voice vanish.
Remember, O Lord, how you promised,
“There shall be no death or mourning or crying or pain.”
Blessed be the Lord who said, “It is done.”
Blessed be him who destroys sin and death forever,
And blessed shall he be,
When we enter the new Jerusalem
With the songs of old.