DON’T HANG UP YOUR HARPS

We all pity the plight of displaced persons. Uprooted from their homeland, they are cast upon a sea of fear and uncertainty. It seems that nature has made us homebodies, for most of us manage to stay rather near the land that nourished us. When we are forced by circumstances of work or health to move faraway, our hearts remain in the land where we played as children. Even when one spends most of his years in an adopted land, it is never quite home to him, and he likes to get back to the ole swimmin’ hole and the little school house and reminisce.

Samuel Woodworth caught the spirit of this in his poem The Old Oaken Bucket:

“How Dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollection presents them to view!

The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood,

And every loved spot which my in fancy knew,

The wide-spreading pond and the mill that stood by it,

The bridge and the rock where the cataract fell;

The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it,

And e’en the rude bucket that hung in the well.

The Israelites were probably more devoted to their homeland than any people in history, for their culture and religion were tied in with the land. To the prophets it was a holy land, and its most famous son could cry ever so meaningfully, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem …” David had chosen it. Solomon had adorned it. The prophets had hallowed it. And God dwelt in it.

It makes all the more pathetic the sad condition described by the poet in Psalms 137:

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung up our harps.

For there our captors required of us songs,

And our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

God’s people were in captivity in a foreign land. They had been carried far away into pagan Babylon. Away from the land and away from the temple that was now destroyed, they were a displaced and a disheartened people. They had been a people of mirth and song, a happy people, and it is noteworthy that even into captivity they had carried their harps. But they could not find it in their hearts to use them in pagan Babylon.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,

If I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!

The harp was a symbol of gladness and hope. David and all the people played their harps as the ark of the covenant was brought into Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6:5), and David used the harp to calm the evil spirit within King Saul (I Sam. 16:23). In his description of apostasy and judgment, Isaiah includes the poignant verse “The mirth of the harp is stilled” (Isa. 24:8).

They took their harps with them into Babylon in hopes of comforting one another and communing with God. This speaks well for their spiritual concerns. Imagine being driven as a slave halfway across a continent to a foreign land, and among the few possessions you manage to take with you is a harp! Now that their city was destroyed by the hordes of Nebuchadnezzar, and the temple devastated, the harp was all they had left. It served as a symbol of all that they had loved and lost. But now in a foreign land, because of the ugly taunts of their captors, they hung their harps on the willow trees and did not use them. Instead of playing and singing they sat down and wept.

It is all so understandable. Perhaps they could have played if their enemies had not mocked them. They may have thought it irreverent to play to the cruel cry of “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” Too, they were slaves. Life was cruel. They were lonely and homesick. Their holy land lay in ruins. God must have seemed as far away as Babylon seemed cold. Yes, indeed, how could they play the songs of Zion in such circumstances!

Yet they should have played anyway. God would have heard their melody in Babylon as well as Jerusalem. If some brave soul had gone to the willows and taken down a harp and played like David played to Saul, how refreshing it would have been. And to the chant “How can we play the songs of Zion in a strange land?”, he could have replied, “This is the very place God’s praises should be played” As for the Babylonians who derided them, it would have been a marvelous testimony of the faith and hope of an enslaved people, far more than sitting down and weeping was.

Had they gone on and sung in Babylon instead of weeping, they would have been more like Paul and Silas in prison and less like Elijah under the juniper tree.

We all have our Babylons. There are reasons enough in the lives, of all of us to sit down and weep. Ours is a troubled word, and it is often cold and distressing. We may even sometimes feel like people in exile. The world seems to be moving on tiptoe amidst sleeping dogs. Security hangs by a slender thread. Nations distrust each other, and even our neighbors seem to be strangers. We are in a foreign land. Religion is going our of style or becoming so secular that there is no longer any place for harps and singing. The world derides us, the flesh opposes us, and secularism challenges us. There are evil forces aplenty that taunt us with, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

We must not hang our harps upon the willows and weep. We must become salted with the fires of life’s hardships, and give testimony to the world of a God of love and peace. We all have harps to play. The coach out on the athletic field, the teacher in the classroom, the worker at the factory, and the statesman at his podium. We have many songs for the world to hear, all of which are inspired of God, all of which bear witness to his presence in our lives. Let’s not fail to sing them as the world affords the opportunities. The human predicament being what it is, it is hardly the time to hang up our harps and weep. The world needs to see Spirit-filled people, buoyant with faith and hope. They will listen to our harps, perhaps more than to our words.

Even life in the church can be discouraging. Those who would be truly spiritual, searching out the deeper things of God, are often mocked in one way or another. It is sometimes more difficult to be a free man in the church than it is in the world. The search for truth ends at many a church door, and those who venture beyond the appointed boundaries are not always appreciated. Even the fellowship of the saints is measured as if by a rule, and some who love Jesus as much as we are not fully accepted because of differences in color or creed.

The church itself needs to hear the songs of vibrant faith. We must agree with Elton Trueblood in viewing the church as “the world’s greatest mission field.” Those who would be free, happy and spiritual must not lose heart, not even when the church itself seems like a foreign land. Certainly we must not leave the church in search for freedom elsewhere. This would be to hang up one’s harp in despair. We must be content, as the poet urges, “to labor and to wait” and thus give witness where we can be the most effective.

The songs of life need to break forth in the personal lives of us all. We are be set with anxiety and frustration over everything from rearing children to keeping a jobor enjoying children and finding meaning in a job. Bad health, mounting debts, or ruptured personal relations can well nigh destroy us. Life is sometimes so tragic that we must weep. But the harp must not hang on a willow for long. There must be the songs of hope to make life bearable. The melodies will include forbearance, compassion, and diligence. And humor as well, for we must keep laughing, especially at ourselves, and not take ourselves too seriously.

Some of us have harps in the poems we write or the pictures we paint, the business we run or the team we coach. One person’s harp is his talent to show pity, another his talent to make money for the good of the world. Some play upon the harp by the smiles they give us, others by their grace to listen to our tales of woe.

The human predicament being what it is, we can ill afford to have harps hanging in willow trees, with much of the best of mankind sitting down and weeping. Like David before Saul, let us be at work refreshing a world that is downcast by plucking gently upon our harps.—the Editor