His Song

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? Psalm 134:7 A friend of mine regularly sends me his writings. They're a blessing. One of his most recent closed with an exhortation that we, the followers of Christ, would not cease singing His "song" as we walk through this "strange land." An increasingly strange land. The above Psalm was written during Israel's Babylonian captivity, with the psalmist asking the question of how could the people sing of Him and to Him in this land of bondage and pain? It's a fair question. One many of us are asking even now. How in the land of our affliction and heartache, can we be expected to sing songs of praise and gratitude, of His glory and greatness in the "land" we are walking through. Today I attended the graveside service of a man who recently died from the disease of cancer. His father, my friend, sat at the graveside. 10 years earlier, almost to the day, he had buried his daughter in this same cemetery. His only two children, both taken too early by a hateful disease. How could he sing the Lord's song in this land he found himself in? How could the man who just a week ago received a letter from his wife's lawyer, initiating divorce proceedings? How could the young husband, who tomorrow will bury his lovely wife, also a victim of cancer? How can any of us who walk through the darkness that surrounds us? The answer is not easy to come upon, but it is real, and it is true. I heard Joni Eareckson Tada speaking this morning on suffering, something she is far too well acquainted with. She spoke of the furnace experience of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's furnace experience at the hands of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. They had refused to bow to the godlike image of himself he had made. He ordered their execution in a blazing hot furnace. They didn't die. Instead, as the king looked on, he saw not just the three men walking about in the fire unharmed, but a fourth who was with them. That one was Christ Himself. Tada said that in the midst of the white hot flames they came into a union, and intimacy with Him more wondrous and glorious than any words could describe. It's what she has discovered in her own suffering. It's what He would have us discover in ours. This is how, even in the strangest land of deepest sufferings, we may still sing His song, even though we sing it with tears. In the flames, we find the sweetness and intimacy of Christ. To be a follower of Christ is to be a stranger in a foreign land. This is not our home, and this land we walk through on the way to that which is our home, is filled with loss and pain. We will enter into the furnace more than once, but in it, we will discover an intimacy with Him the flames and heat cannot touch. If you're there, look for Him, because He is there with you, and if you let Him, He will give you His song, and you will sing it, even if you sing it with tears. Blessings, Pastor O