“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:4)
The Jewish experience of slavery and being in a strange land threatened to remove the Lord’s song from their lips. As they sat on the shores of the Euphrates River in Babylon, they wept over their forced captivity and the bleak uncertainty of their future.
Every child opens his eyes to a strange land at birth and cries until he is reassured that he can trust his environment. To this end, God, our heavenly Father, rejoices over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17) and comforts us with his love.
Sometimes he puts a new song of praise in our mouth that is on continuous replay within our spirits. There have been occasions when my wife and I would simultaneously break out in singing the same song of praise at home, and we would just start laughing.
Paul describes this as: “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19).
This Lord’s song is not a performance but springs from a dynamic relationship with God. While in Macedonia, Paul and Silas were severely beaten and cast into an inner prison with their feet fastened between heavy wooden blocks. However, they transformed this strange setting into a powerful worship hall when about midnight, they openly prayed and sang praises to God who miraculously delivered them.
Sometimes, our strange land is not located abroad but created by local circumstances. When the coordinated Moabite and Ammonite armies came against Judah, King Jehoshaphat sought the Lord and was instructed to appoint singers who would march ahead of the army singing, “Praise the Lord; for his mercy endures forever”. They did not have to fight that day because the Lord defeated their enemies (2 Chronicles 20:21).
For many slaves from Africa, the Caribbean became the strange land to which they brought their work songs and call-and-response rhythms that synchronised heavy labour, reduced fatigue, and lifted their spirits.
Their drum and vocal beats matched the tempo needed for the projects they attended and distracted the mind from the physical exhaustion of repetitive labour. Singing together also fostered a sense of community and camaraderie and turned lonely, tedious labour into a festive cultural event.
When Paul visited and observed the cosmopolitan city of Athens, he noted that God, the Creator, could not be contained in man-made temples and that he created the nations, appointed their geographical boundaries and determined their rise and fall. God’s end-game is to make himself known to us, for we are his offspring, and in him we live, move and exist (Acts17:16-28).
He removed our ancestors from their homeland by way of slavery, indentureship, and other ordained events. But no one asks, “Where is God my Maker, who gives us songs in the night?” (Job 35:10).
Like Abraham and his household, we are strangers and foreigners in the earth, looking for a city, whose maker and builder is God. Are we still singing the Lord’s song?
