A Pilgrim Song
Let’s sing this pilgrim song, and may our children be caught up in the singing.
By: Elizabeth Harwell, Perimeter School Mom
“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
We were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
And our tongue with shouts of joy;
Then they said among the nations
’The Lord has done great things for them.’
The Lord has done great things for us;
We are glad.
Restore us our fortunes, O Lord,
Like streams in the Negeb!
Those who sow in tears
Shall reap with shouts of joy!
He who goes out weeping,
Bearing the seed for sowing
Shall come home with shouts of joy,
Bringing his sheaves with him.”
Psalm 126
The psalms that are numbered 120-134 in the Bible are called the Songs of Ascent. These fifteen psalms were likely sung by Hebrew pilgrims on their way to their festivals in Jerusalem. These were “ascent songs” because the pilgrims would have been ascending while they traveled, as Jerusalem was the highest city in Palestine. It’s a really beautiful thought - that these songs were not meant to be sung alone but as a chorus that mingled with the tromping of feet that were on a common path with a common destination. These voices would have been raised to the heavens in worship, but they also would have stayed earthbound, too, and woven in and out of friends’ ears: anthems of truth that went before you and carried you from behind.
I’ve thought a lot about the children on that road, and how they would have been caught up in the singing. It’s made me wonder what sort of songs our children are being caught up in now. We are all sharing a common road, after all, with a common destination. What anthems are they hearing us sing as we travel Home?
A Pilgrim Song
2020 has been a difficult year for all of us in different ways. Truthfully, for the Harwells, 2019 was a more difficult year, and Psalm 126 was a song that the Lord gave to us as our pilgrim song. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord,” we would cry, “Like streams in the Negeb!” The Negeb was a desert, and Andrew likes to say that the people here were asking for God to do the most impossible thing: to make a rainforest out of a desert.
We prayed for that in 2019. We pray for it now. There are a lot of desert places in our world, and in our country, and in our hearts. We need streams of Jesus’s resurrection power to make all things new.
A Song to Sing
It is a strange year to gather around a Thanksgiving table, isn’t it? Let’s just forget about the gathering part, which is a whole thing in itself. To have to think about gratitude after so much grief is a sort of mental whiplash. It’s like we’ve almost surrendered to the brokenness of the world this year. With every health diagnosis, natural disaster, or lost wallet we roll our eyes and make a Facebook post: “Thanks 2020, you just keep on giving.” And our children are caught up in these songs.
I don’t think the answer is to stop lamenting. In fact, I think modern Christians haven’t done a great job at allowing for true lament, and so that’s not really what we are hearing or experiencing right now. The Psalms of Ascent, and particularly Psalm 126, give us good words to engage grief with gratitude. They give us a song to sing …
He who goes out weeping,
Bearing the seed for sowing
Shall come home with shouts of joy,
Bringing his sheaves with him.
This song reminds us that our tears are not given in vain, but watering some invisible seed in the kingdom of God. It’s easy to write off 2020 as a total waste, but that cannot be true because in the kingdom of God it’s always “further up and further in.” This is part of the road that will bring us, and our children, home. We will shout for joy.
Let’s Sing This Pilgrim Song Together
So as we sit around our tables on Thanksgiving, and on every ordinary day and meal after that, may our children be caught up in the singing of a deeper and truer gratitude. I love the Sandra McCracken song Fools Gold, where she sings: “And if it’s not okay/ Then this is not the end/ And this is not okay/ So I know this is not, this is not the end.”
Our Thanksgiving tables point back to another pilgrim people who made a long and treacherous journey to a new home: a promised land. Planting crops in this new climate and new soil wasn’t easy for them, and they rejoiced at their harvest and spread a table. But before the crop, there was the waiting. The invisible work of God happened in the darkness of the soil, out of eyesight and beyond understanding.
May our Thanksgiving tables point not only backwards to this meal of gratitude, but also forward to the coming Feast with Jesus at the end of our pilgrim journey.
Right now, we participate in the discipline of waiting. But no story is over until it finds its seat at that Table, and even then it has only begun. Then we will be …
… like those who dream.
Then our mouths were filled with laughter,
And our tongues with shouts of joy;
Then they said among the nations
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us;
We are glad.
Let’s sing this pilgrim song together, for it is true, and may our children be caught up in the singing.
God shows up in our messy places and transforms ordinary moments into holy ones.