Wesley United Methodist Church, Orange TX

137:9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

Wow what a cruel bunch of people those Jews were back then!!!!  Well not really.  They were devastated by their capture and the Babylonians were moving them from their homeland into a foreign land that was far away from everything they knew and loved.  Yes they were bitter but wouldn’t you be if you were conquered by foreign armies and had seen your homes destroyed; seen the people you loved massacred and all of your possessions taken from you. 

Plenty of reason to be bitter and if you read the Psalm from the beginning you hear that there is no joy in their hearts as they remember all that had been done to them.  Perhaps even they had seen their very own little ones dashed against the rocks.   When I read this scripture I don’t read that they are wanting to do the dashing but that they are being realistic and perhaps prophesying that sooner or later the Babylonian nation will suffer the kind of defeat they have suffered and will see the atrocities visited on them that Israel has suffered.  A cruel world back then and a cruel world we live in now.   

Violence begets violence so seeking God and knowing the love Jesus Christ has for this world is the right way.  Christ does not condone war, hatred, prejudice, murder and mayhem.  He teaches us to love our neighbor and to love them because we first love our God.  Love your neighbor.  That is really a very simple and easy rule to follow.  Practice it and it will get easier.

Randy

This entry was posted on September 28, 2010 at 8:36 am and is filed under Lectionary Scriptures, Pastor's Ponderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.