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Culture Saturday: Tame the Lions

Let’s close out Spurgeon’s sermon on Psalm 57. Two weeks ago we looked at finding comfort when lions— vicious, blood-thirsty, non-believers— abound. Last week was patience, “[t]he less they love you, love them all the more. Baffle the lions.”

The ungodly are lions, and you are not; do not try to meet them in their own line. You will never roar as well as they do. If you are a Christian man, you have not the knack of roaring. Leave them to do it. Your way of meeting them is not by losing your temper and abusing your antagonists, and so becoming a lion yourself; but you must conquer them with gentleness, patience, kindness, love. I pray you, dear brothers and sisters who have to bear a good deal for Christ’s sake, do not get soured in spirit. There is a tendency in a martyr age to become obstinate and pugnacious. You must not be so. Love, love, love; and the more you are provoked, love the more. Overcome evil with good. I think it necessary to mention these cautions, because I know many require them.

Among Lions, sermon by Charles Spurgeon

I want to call out a few things here.

“Your way of meeting them is not by losing your temper and abusing your antagonists, and so becoming a lion yourself; but you must conquer them with gentleness, patience, kindness, love.”

Don’t become a lion to deal with the lions. Ill-tempered, abusive, taunting. You should be gentle, patient, kind, and loving. That is how we are to conquer.

There is a tendency in a martyr age to become obstinate and pugnacious.

Stubborn and quick to argue. Pugnacious is a juicy word. Sorry, I’m a word nerd. We cannot, as Christians, be these things. Proverbs is full of advice on how to argue, how to avoid arguments, when to argue, and probably more important than anything: when to shut up. The human ability to talk ourselves into arguments that we do not belong in and then stubbornly stay in those arguments when we do not belong there and have no ability to either win or bring glory to God through them is hubris.

Love, love, love; and the more you are provoked, love the more.

Christian, we are called to be unlike the world. We are called to do many things that go against the grain of the world. Loving no matter what and loving more when the world hates is quintessentially Christian.

[T]he braver thing is to ask for grace to stop with the lions and tame them.

Sometimes you are called to endure persecution— the taunting, the backstabbing, the slander, the lies— because you are there to show Christ’s love. You are there to show Christ’s patience. Christ’s mercy. Christ’s grace. And slowly soften the lion. Beg their curiosity.

Sometimes the Christian man should say, “No: God has made me strong in grace; and I will stop here, and fight it out. These are lions, but I will tame them. I believe that God has put me here on purpose to bring my fellow-workmen to the Saviour, and by his grace I will do it.”

Steadfast. Christian, be steadfast. Loyal to the cause. Steady and resolute. If God calls you to stand amongst lions— whether they are coworkers, classmates, or family members— then you stand amongst the lions.

I hope that we have some drops of that grand Christian blood still in our veins; and if we have, we shall feel that we could go to the gates of hell to win a sinner. You are not like your Master unless you would die to save men from hell.

Spurgeon is a world-favorite preacher and this makes me think of another quote from him.

If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.

If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for. One of the many reasons you continue here after finding Christ— instead of just being yoinked into Heaven for safekeeping— is to reach others for Christ. Tame the lions. Pray for them. Warn them. Preach the word to them. We should be willing to do everything to win a sinner including dying. Look to your history Christian, look to the martyrs of our faith. How many walked into plague-ridden hospitals to win sinners, how many walked into cannibal tribes to win sinners, how many traveled to distant lands and faced down those that wished them dead just to win sinners. Look at how many of our brothers have had their throats slit by Muslims, how many were used as candles by Nero, and how many have been burned alive at the stake for not rescinding their Lord’s name and worshiping gods of wood and stone. Christian, that grand blood is still in our veins. And it calls for you to die to show others that they may live. To truly live.

It will be a grand thing for you to come one day to the church-meeting with two or three of your neighbours whom you have been the means of converting to Christ. I like to see a man march, if he can do it, with a tame lion on each side. When a man has by God’s grace brought some of those that were drunkards and swearers to the feet of Jesus, oh, it is a grand triumph.

Christian, tame the lions. Bring them to the feet of Jesus.

This sermon should be read in full if you have the time. Charles Spurgeon was a man of good words. I could grab so many words and phrases from just this one sermon and learn. But I find it is very important in an age where the lions are begging more for our blood, demanding that we lose our jobs because of our views— views that remain unchanged over thousands of years—, demand that medical licenses be removed, demand that they not be allowed to teach students, and even dreaming of us being burned alive at the stake. Yes, this sermon is as important as it was the day it was preached, just as true today.

Demon Hunter: Exile

Every Monday we drive over 2 hours for the kid’s music lessons. Sometimes we fill this time with audiobooks. Sometimes podcasts. Sometimes we just catch up on conversations. Last night was music and it had been a while since I listened to Demon Hunter’s album Exile straight through, so we put that on and screamed out.

Much of this album is counter-culture— specifically political and social media culture. Take Master, which screams:

You need a lesson in loyalty
No need to suffer alone
You violate your humanity
When you recoil away from the tone

If all you want is just a master
We could be everything you need
If flesh and bone is what you’re after
Then let the foolish take the lead

Drop your Jesus, Christian. If all you want is just a master, the world is more than willing to fulfill every need you have. Just follow the tone.

They tell me God is not enough for war
Take a lesser man and bleed for him

In the words of the band, this is a concept album “[s]et in the aftermath of civilized society’s collapse, the 12 songs examine modern life through the lens of a nonconformist, contemplating a life untethered.” Social media is killing us. Specifically algorithm-powered feeds. The algorithm wants engagement and extreme content gets engagement. In Ryan Clark’s words, “[e]ven when it seems people have pinpointed things like social media as destructive, the concept of abstaining from it is quickly excused away.”

How do I silence the world?
How do I live through the noise?

We gave you this voice
A freedom you don’t deserve
Resounding with all of the noise
Dying to strike a nerve

Whatever happened to indifference?
Whatever happened to divided views?
It reads a lot like intolerance
When every word that you write says
freedom is dead

I saw an extreme far Leftist calling for the guillotining of Republicans on Twitter a few weeks ago. When he was responded to with “what happened to tolerance?” his response was “who ever said I was tolerant?” The tolerance bullshit was just to ram through the only allowed views. Now the facade is coming down. Whatever happened to indifference? To divided views? If dissent is not allowed, then freedom is dead.

I am a longtime fan of Demon Hunter and this album is no different. Ryan Clark is a great songwriter, and a great singer, and this album is full of great riffs and great lyrics when you slow down and listen.

Culture Saturday: The Anvil Never Strikes in Return

When there is a hard word spoken do not notice it; or if you must hear it, forget it as quickly as ever you can. Love others all the more the less they love you: repay their enmity with love. Heap coals of fire upon them by making no return to a hard speech except by another deed of kindness. Very seldom defend yourself: it is a waste of breath, and casting pearls before swine.

Among Lions, sermon by Charles Spurgeon

Love others all the more the less they love you. This doesn’t feel like the way of the world. It didn’t when I was a kid and it’s gotten even more, unlike the world. Enmity today is cyclical. Both sides spew lies about each other, both sides slander and demonize. But, Christian, we are called to repay enmity with love. We are called to break from the circle. Because often a response other than love is a “waste of breath”. Those with hate in their hearts cannot hear. They have already drawn their conclusions because they are being drawn to their conclusions, like pawns in a game. So love them. They may shout back. They may still swing their flimsy swords. But love them.

The anvil is struck by the hammer, and the anvil never strikes in return, and yet the anvil wears the hammer out. Patience baffles fury and vanquishes malice.

Patience.

Something that smacks me frequently is that the reason I am called to patience, mercy, and grace for those that raise spears against me is that when I raised my spear against God, he showed patience, mercy, and grace for me. In high school, I raged against His people. I didn’t believe the Bible to be true. I argued for hours with Christians. And they showed great patience with my curiosity, my arrogance, my strong-headedness. Why? Because God was doing His thing in His time. And that time came for me in college when I heard His voice: read Genesis. And so, after a bit of protest, I consumed His Word. I learned. And all those arguments came back and what should have appeared as pearls before swine all those times were all sowing to the moment when God knocked.

Christian, have patience. Slow your heart and remember your Savior. He forgave you. You did nothing for that forgiveness. You couldn’t. You were but a slave to sin. You were unforgivable by all worldly terms. But He went to the cross for you nonetheless. Be patient.

God will not quench the fire of persecution, for it consumes our dross, but he will moderate its power so that not a grain of pure metal shall be lost. The lions are chained, dear friend; they can go no farther than God permits.

God permits. No one acts of their own will. Not truly. Your God has a plan, dear Christian. And that plan is good. For some, you will be on the run until you are called Home. For others, it will come in waves. But this is to plan. The lions are only permitted to do that which God permits. Trust your Lord.

In this country the most they can do, as a rule, is to howl, they cannot bite; and howling does not break bones; why, then, be afraid? […] Talking will not hurt you. Harden your spirit against it, and bear it gallantly. Go and tell your Lord of it if your heart fails you; and then go forward[…] The lions can roar, but they cannot rend— fear them not.

Recollect here that Spurgeon is not speaking in the figurative, the metaphorical. He is speaking in the context of London in 1879. As of that time, the drunkards could do no more than howl. They were bound by law. This is not meant figuratively in that “during the age of the Church, the lions are chained and can only howl,” as he acknowledged earlier that the old howl of “Christians to the lions” would return to the streets of London. Slander is one thing, but now Christians are being arrested in London for praying silently on the street. Now Christian students are being arrested from Canadian Catholic schools for not worshipping gods of wood and stone. There is a difference here. But even so, the lions are only permitted that which God permits. God permitted Paul to be in prison. He had a plan.

Christian, if your heart is hurting take it to Him. Pour it out. Cast your burdens. And then move forward. That’s not to say that is easy. For some it is. For others, it is not. I can say that I continue to struggle here. But bury yourself in His Word. Get closer to Him. He has you.

[W]hen your soul is among lions, there is another lion there as well as the lions that you can see. […] If your faith be as it should be, it will be a great joy to you to know that he is always with you, that he is always near you. If he is ever absent from others of his servants, he is never away from his persecuted servants.

Flimsy swords and dragons. Your Lord is with you. Feel His warm breath. Feel His peace. If He is not afraid, why would you be? Take a big deep breath.

There can be comfort among the lions. That comfort comes from God and His people. Yes, there will be gnashing teeth. Yes, there will be howls that shake you to your core. Go forward, good Christian, and love. And the less they love you, love them all the more. Baffle the lions.

You Are Being Used

You are but a cog in the machine of time, a pawn in a game played over and over by a narsissistic Devil that has the audacity to think this time he will win. He whispers in your ear and convinces you to take a sword against men of God, a pawn manipulated to do his bidding. He will give your life purpose, meaning. You are one in a long line of pawns. Used. What you are doing is no surprise. It is not some new thing. He seldom has a new tactic. We have seen this played out time and again.

Drop the sword.

The blood you are drawing will not give you purpose and will certainly not give you life. It’s meaningless. Purposeless. A frail attempt by an old Snake to win a game he has already lost. He’s read the Book. See audacity. But he might as well take as many with him before his time comes. And you are one of them, stuck in a cage as old as time.

Drop the sword.

There is blood that will give meaning and purpose.

Defy that Dragon.

You are not my enemy. And he is not your ally. He is your master and you his slave.

Drink from the cup. Chains unbound, freedom known, true identity found.

Culture Saturday: Comfort Among Lions

Last year our pastor, during our Summer in the Psalms, quoted from Charles Spurgeon. This week I looked up the 1879 sermon on Psalm 57 that he was quoting from.

In it, Spurgeon talked about being among lions. And he didn’t sugarcoat it.

My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts— the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

- Psalm 57:4

It would be all too easy to say that persecution is what happens to them and not to us. Or say that real persecution— the good ol’ True Scotsman argument— is not happening here. And this was 150 years ago. Christianity was even more encroached in the Western culture. But Charles didn’t go that easy route. He addresses the working men of Britain that are under persecution by coworkers.

They declare that they never will be slaves; but they are slaves — slaves to their own ungodliness and drunkenness— the great mass of them; and only where divine grace comes in and snaps the chain do men become free at all.

Not driving the point, but “only where divine grace comes in and snaps the chain do men become free at all” is an excellent phrase. If you don’t know that divine grace, you are enslaved to Satan. Period.

If one serious man sets his face steadfastly to serve God the baser sort seem as if they must get him under their feet, and treat him with every indignity that malice can devise. It may be all in sport, but the victim does not think so.

I once looked up the word sarcasm. The word comes from Greek sarkasmos, literally meaning “to strip off the flesh”. That is what sarcasm is doing. Jeering, poking fun, mocking. None of it builds up. Now some guys, that is how their relationships work with each other. But one always has to check themselves.

Do not tell me that persecution ceased when the last martyr burned. There are martyrs who have to burn by the slow fire of cruel mockings day after day; and I bless God that the old grit is still among us, and that the old spirit still survives, so that men defy sneers and slander and hold on their way.

“Burn by the slow fire of cruel mockings.” I feel that. There are those that seek to destroy. There are old ways of pulling good men into the streets and throwing them into pits of lions. And there are new ways of ruining their reputations, ruining their careers, ruining their lives. And for good men— good men that in death would be freed of the sorrows of this world— this can be much worse.

Why did the psalmist call them lions? “Dogs” is about as good a name as they deserve. […] The lion is not only strong but cruel; and it is real cruelty which subjects well-meaning men to reproach and misrepresentation. The enemies of Christ and his people are often as cruel as lions, and would slay us if the law permitted them.

This was 150 years ago and might be only getting more true. The dogs, the lions today still seek to destroy. Where 150 years ago the drunkards mocked the well-meaning man, today they have contrived ways to destroy people more systematically. They push ideologies that are contrary to that of Christians. They require all to agree and for those that do not, they come up with new words to throw at them. Homophobic, transphobic, bigot, worse. And, like devils before, they try to convince the world that their ideology is no ideology at all, but just how the world works. Satan doesn’t exist, after all. And the names aren’t the worst of it. They lose meaning. No, they are in fact taking you out of the public square. Your views are not allowed. It’s not safe for you to be around children. They come up with rubrics to weed you out during their hiring processes.

You need not be ashamed to be pelted with the same dirt that was thrown at your Master; and if it should ever come to this, that you should be stripped of everything, and false witnesses should rise up against you, and you should even be condemned as a felon, and taken out to execution, still your lot will not be worse than his.

But our lot? It isn’t worse than that our Master was given.

Nor was your Master alone. Recollect the long line of prophets that went before Christ. Which of them was it that was received with honour? Did they not stone one and slay another with the sword, cut one in pieces with a saw, put others to death with stones? Ye know that the march of the faithful may be tracked by their blood.

Man, Charles. Where’s the hope? In Christ, we are safe, right? They’ll know we are Christians by our… blood trail.

Of all the gallant shows the Roman Empire ever saw, that which excited the populace beyond all things else was to see a family— a man and his wife, perhaps, and a grown-up daughter and son, and three or four children — all marched into the arena, and the big door thrown up, that out might rush the lion and spring upon them, and tear them to pieces. What harm had they done? They had forgiven their enemies. That was one of their great sins. They would not worship the gods of wood and stone. They would not blaspheme the name of Jesus whom they loved, for he had taught them to love one another, and to love all mankind. For such things as this men raised the cry, “Christians to the lions! Christians to the lions!”

Good Christians loved. Worked diligently. Gave to their communities. Adopted children. Helped the homeless. Didn’t blaspheme— to speak of God in an irreverent, impious manner. “They would not worship the gods of wood and stone.” And for that, the streets cried out “Christians to the lions!”

Good Christian, you are not called to be friends with the world. “You may pick up a fashionable religion, and get through the world with it very comfortably; but if you have the true faith you will have to fight for it.”

Just now the merciful hand of providence prevents open persecution, but only let that hand be taken away, and the old spirit will rage again. The seed of the serpent hates the seed of the woman still; and if the old dragon were not chained he would devour the man-child, as he has often tried to do. Do not deceive yourselves, in one form or other the old howl of “Christians to the lions!” would soon be heard in London if almighty power did not sit upon the throne and restrain the wrath of man.

I fear the hand of God is being taken away in the West. The old howl is returning. But while comfort cannot be had in this world for good men, in Christ and His Church it can be.

You should do what your Master did— make his church your father and mother and sister and brother; nay, better still, make Christ all these to you and more. Take the Lord Jesus to be everything that all the dearest of mortals could be and far more.

As I’ve said before, grabbing my instrument and going to church brings enough comfort to get me through my weeks. Go back to Psalm 57. David, holed up in a cave, surrounded by dragons, spears seeking his mortal flesh, grabbed his lyre and belted out worshipful thanksgiving in defiance of the dark.

Christian. Defy the lurking dragons, defy the dark.

Astro Build Performance

Sixty-five seconds just to build out the first pages of the #tech pages. Why? Because they are reliant on a complex function that gets a tag map. So let’s understand how pages are built for a route, from what I gather.

function doComplexThing() {
	const things = [];
	// do the thing

	// return the data
	return data;
}

The getStaticPaths method returns an array of pages and their data. This is called once. So that complex function? Not really a problem here. Then Astro renders each page that getStaticPaths returns. The problem is that I need that complex function’s data here too. Without calling it here, we build these pages in 10 seconds. With it, 65.

export async function getStaticPaths() {
	const things = doComplexThing();
	return things.map(thing => ({
		params: {
			tag: thing
		}
	}));
}

Okay, now we have options. We could just put that data in the paths’ props. But it is used by a component in the page that is rendered. We could pass that data as a prop to that component. But it would be easier to call it inside the component. 65 seconds. And that’s just a fraction of the pages that need to build.

And that leads to an old trick from my PHP days. Caching the data of a function and returning it the next time we try to access it.

export let cachedThings: any[] | undefined = undefined;
export function doComplexThing() {
	if (cachedThings) return cachedThings;
	
	const things = [];
	// do the thing
	
	// cache it
	cachedThings = things;

	// return the data
	return data;
}

Now when we call doComplexThing() the first time, it runs the complex code. But then we hit it hundreds of more times and returns the cache.

On Poetry and the Rise of AI

There were eras in which the work of Christian poets was respected and even lauded. But that was then and this is now. While we still value poetry in the form of songs, most of us pay scant attention to reading or writing poetry. There could be any number of explanations for this, though I am inclined to blame the decline of formal verse (i.e. defined forms of poetry) and the rise of free verse (i.e. neglecting rhyme and meter), much of which is enough to cause the best of us to give up on poetry altogether.

Tim Challies, Poetry of Redemption

I have been trying to will myself back into poetry. I used to consume a lot of poetry. Pretty sure I lost it in my tumultuous twenties. The quote above started my Sunday with lament and awareness that it wasn’t just me seeing poetry’s decline.

And then I read this morning that the rising AIs cannot write poetry. Or do basic arithmatic, which is unsurprisingly interlinked with poetry.

So I decided to try a nonce form and asked ChatGPT to produce a poem with a particular number of stanzas and a set number of stanzas per line. Over and over, it would write a few stanzas with the correct number of lines and then veer off towards the end and produce a much longer stanza. Like it lost count.

The danged robot couldn’t count.

AK Krajewska, Robot without rhyme or rhythm

Some very interesting points follow in the article— which you really should read.

Ted Chiang explained that when large language models (LLMs) are trained, they don’t actually assimilate the underlying principles. Instead, they produce the statistically likely next thing.

These LLMs does actually understand, as they cannot. Well, they can understand, but not truly. Because English doesn’t give us multiple words for understand. In Christian circles, we oft separate head and heart knowledge. These AIs have head knowledge but no heart.

More than that, formal verse is an exercise in applying principles you’ve understood. ChatGPT could produce a statistically likely definition of a sestina based on all the examples of sestina definitions it had come across in its training. To produce a sestina, it would have to have assimilated the principles.

[…]

There’s one more reason why LLMs can’t write formal verse, and this one is a little more obvious, though still, I think, worth mentioning. LLMs are trained exclusively on written text. They do not have the sound of words in their training, as far as I know.

[…]

Formal verse with meter and rhyme relies on the sound of the words. While you can guess what words are statistically likely to rhyme based on their spelling, it’s only saying them out loud that lets you know if you’ve succeeded.

Our language is far more complex than letters combined. Pronunciation is key to writing poetry. Manipulation of pronunciation too.

I wonder what other effects LLMs will have on literature. Might formal verse in English, which has fallen out of favor since the early 20th century, make a comeback as a prestige form, edging out free verse?

And there was the full circle to Tim Challies. Tim noted that the last hundred years have seen a dearth of poetry. But now it may be what separates us from the AI.

Finally, I wonder if, given that LLMs can produce polished but contentless prose corporate speak, will poetry make a comeback as the form for signaling sincerity? Could you imagine getting a notice of layoffs from your very humane VP in the form of sonnet? I’m not sure it would be a better world but it would be interesting.

Culture Saturday: Teachers with Biblical Values Are Not Safe

Scare tactics that emphasize an us-vs.-them dynamic are an easy way for powerful people to control people by keeping them distracted and by preventing them from uniting. But as someone who has had his job directly threatened by a member of the far Left, I know that this isn’t that.

A school board in Arizona has cut a contract with a Christian university that had sent teachers-in-training to the Arizona schools. Why?

My concerns, [is] when I go to Arizona Christian University’s website, [ they are] ‘committed to Jesus Christ, accomplishing his will and advancements on earth as in Heaven.

Fox News

And:

Part of their values is… [to] ‘transform the culture with truth by promoting the Biblically-informed values that are foundational to Western civilization, including the centrality of family, traditional sexual morality, and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.

These are direct quotes from the school board. The problem they have is that this university is Christian and teaches Christian values, including the value of sharing the gospel.

“Proselytizing is embedded into how they teach. And I just don’t believe that that belongs in schools.”

Let’s just define “proselytizing”:

the action of attempting to convert someone from one religion, belief, or opinion to another

Lack of self-awareness is astonishing sometimes. Christians that are taught to proselytize are not welcome here, but these folks that do nothing but proselytize— attempting to change the opinions of people, students, and families they disagree with— are welcomed with open arms.

This woman in cat ears— go read the article— ran for school board, won, and is now using her newly acquired power to remove Christian teachers from her schools.

These folks are coming for your job, Christian. I can attest first-hand. Clear as day, I do not mean all “these folks.” I mean there is a crowd of people united on one goal and that is the eradication of Christians and Christian values from the public square. These folks are coming for your job.

Christian, be of good reputation, stand firm in your faith, be a good employee, and be a Christian. When they come, continue to do the same. And if God wills, they will fail.

And Christian, it might be time to take back land. Not to retaliate, but to hold to the values of free speech, freedom of religion, and more. Run for school board. Take a job at your local library. And proselytize.

Front Matter CMS

With the relaunch of Finley, I am. a couple of weeks ago I shifted from using a CMS to everything-is-code. My blogging days stretch back to the mid-2000’s and my having built my own blogging tool called Blog Wizard. Various versions of that powered several blogs until I launched Finley, I am. in 2015 on Ghost.

Simply put, I am used to having a CMS. Code is great, but certain things are nicer with a CMS. Managing data things, specifically. The week with the relaunch I had imported all the articles from Ghost 1-to-1. Same tags and everything else. Last Sunday I started refactoring the tags. Because everything-is-code and I realized that I could build something cool if my tags were better. As detailed in the linked article, I merged and deleted a ton of tags. Over 300 tags in over 400 posts.

That brings us to Front Matter CMS. First, it’s a plugin for VS Code. Many CMSs exist for SSGs like Astro that write code. This sits alongside your Markdown post, living in the sidebar of Code. For SEO-minded folks, it provides SEO status info— like title, slug, article length, keyword management, etc. For me, it’s the publishing date, draft status, and very much the tag management for articles I love. Autocomplete on tags will help you remain consistent on your tag use, which I then use for finding similar posts.

And it helps you manage. The Dashboard shows all published posts and easily helps you find and edit your drafts. Taxonomies? Yeah, merging, renaming, deleting, and more. And remember, everything-is-code, so changing merging “video” into “videos” results in 10 changed files that you then commit and push.

If you use Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, or other SSGs that use front matter for metadata around posts, go grab Front Matter CMS and give it a shot.

By the Waters of Babylon

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!”

Psalm 137 1-3

I wrote about a song called Even If the other day. This morning I’m reading through my Bible and land on this psalm. This mirrors that song in many ways. We Christians are far from home, for we Christians are a nomadic, homeless religion. Unlike the Jews, we have no land until the Lord returns. And so often, we find outselves where, as Psalm 69 says, “[m]ore in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause.”

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!

Psalm 137 4-6

I would rather lob my right hand off than sing at their altars.

But also let the reverse of verse 5 be true. Let my right hand never forget its skill, as I, Lord, never lose sight of your coming Glory and the Kingdom.

When we are held to the flame, when we are in the midst of our enemies, when their mocking voices demand that we kowtow to them and deny our God, it can be hard to raise our voices. But don’t hang up your lyre, oh Christian. If they demand that you worship their gods, if they demand that you forget your own:

Awake, O harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn!
I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples;
I will sing praises to you among the nations.

Psalm 57:8b-9

Wake the dawn. Don’t worship at their altars. Your God is not one of many, but the Only. The Name above all. Shout that.

Now pardon me— or don’t, as no pardon is required— as I go riff on I’ll Fly Away on my mandolin. Time to wake the dawn.