The Rivers of Memory - Day 171 Month 6-20 Week 25-3
Today's Reading (Bible in 1 year)
Judges 8, Psalm 137, Jeremiah 48:1-13, Acts 9:1-19
The Rivers of Memory
It’s ok to weep and be sad when you remember times in the past. As soon as I started reading Psalm 137 I could hear “Boney M” singing “By the Rivers of Babylon” that was released in 1978.
(Chorus)
By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat down
Yeah, we wept
When we remembered Zion
There we sat down
Yeah, we wept
When we remembered Zion
The people of Israel, who had been taken into captivity, were asked by their captors to sing one of their songs. Their song became part of their grieving process.
The Babylonians had forcibly removed them from their homeland and from Jerusalem, where the temple stood. They were sad, displaced, and likely exhausted. So they wept.
As I read this Psalm this morning, I could not help but think about my mom, who passed away last November, my dad, who passed away in July 1994, and my childhood home in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
I remembered playing baseball in the backyard (without ever hitting a window), the large vegetable garden that stretched halfway across the yard, and the tomato plants that always grew near the back. I remembered the fruit trees and berry bushes. I remembered my father doing bodywork on the family car to make it last one more year. I remembered the large spruce trees that had become overgrown by the 1980s.
These have all become precious memories. As I listened to Boney M's recording of the song, I wept. More than anything, I thought about missing my mom. Even though I rarely saw her during the last eight years of her life due to proximity of where she was moved to, simply knowing she was still there, even as only a shadow of her former self, was a comfort to me.
These were good memories. What I found interesting was how easily the good memories came to mind while I had to work much harder to remember the difficult ones. The good simply outweighed the bad.
In "By the Rivers of Babylon," the words of the second verse are drawn from Psalm 19:14:
(Verse 2)
Let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart
Be acceptable in Thy sight here tonight
Let the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart
Be acceptable in Thy sight here tonight
As we reflect on memories from our past, we have a choice. We can dwell on what is gone, or we can look forward with thankfulness to God. We do not remain young and innocent forever. We grow up and become adults. Yet we can take those memories and use them as inspiration to help create good memories for others. One way we do that is by turning to God in prayer.
Some who read this may not have many good memories from their past. Some may have spent years living in captivity to pain, abuse, or hardship. My prayer is that God will help you accept those memories while also bringing new experiences into your life that will become the good memories you cherish.
The people of Israel had once enjoyed life in Jerusalem, yet they would spend seventy years in captivity before being able to return to their homeland. Perhaps if your life has not been what you hoped it would be, today can become a turning point. Perhaps you can begin looking forward and trusting that God will reveal Himself to you in powerful ways.
I would like to finish with a prayer.
Sylvia was given a book of prayers last week. Sometimes a written prayer expresses what is in our hearts better than we can express ourselves. The following prayer is quoted from Every Moment Holy, Volume 3 by Douglas McKelvey.
Keeper of All time,
The scents and flavors,
Music and voices of another place
Have enveloped me today
Like a cloud of dust kicked up,
Though only within my own memory.
The winds of the years
Have long since kept that place clean
Of the details I recall.
And I would not turn the clock back -
But that place of old was a site of my growth,
Full of events and people knit into a world
Through which your mercies shone,
And thus it is good and meet to honour it.
Now I hold the remnants of that location
Like the crumbling pieces of a flower,
pressed and dried;
They are aging with me,
And no one around me can see
What that place looks like
In the vibrance of my memory:
Its tendrils,
Its thorns,
Its radiant petals.
Sometimes I am tempted to sit, listless,
In the midst of these fragments.
Finally, from Psalm 19:4
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight today
AMEN
Have a great day!
Steve
You can subscribe to this blog and receive an email each day or week. Just visit the following link. https://follow.it/my-faith-view-from-here-daily-readings-and-thoughts?leanpub
Comments
Post a Comment