Are you angry?

Have you ever been really angry? No, I mean really angry. So angry that you wanted to see babies thrown on rocks and their bodies smashed?

Well, not sure if I have ever been that angry. Been pretty angry in my lifetime.

Here is the Palmist expressing his anger over being hauled off to a foreign country and enslaved:

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.

Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. – Psalm 137:8-9

Why would the Bible record this kind of raw, human anger? Is God saying it is okay to drop newborns onto rocks?

The Bible never sanitizes the raw reality of human emotion. There are days that people do get so angry that they wish terrible evil on the children of their enemies. “After all beat me up but don’t touch my children,” we say. It is difficult to express your anger more powerfully than to say you wish terrible tragedy on someone’s child.

God did not strike the Psalmist dead for expressing his anger in this most violent manner. God is big enough for your anger. God already knows how angry you are; just admit it. – Ron Friesen

Sing me a song...

Many followers of Jesus think that their faith is under siege. Around them they see people attacking their beliefs and the practice of these beliefs. It isn’t the first time that the followers of God have found themselves surrounded by unfriendly forces. Over 2,500 years ago God’s people were hauled off to be slaves of a foreign power. There captors taunted them to sing praises to God in face of the toil of forced labor and homelessness. The Psalmist, recording this experience, asks:

How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land? – Psalm 137:4

If we are going to faithfully live our faith in a post-Christian world, we will need to learn to sing the songs the Lord in a foreign land. What do you think? – Ron Friesen