What do you do when life overwhelms you?
Even the happiest people can be overwhelmed with grief. Things happen. Circumstances can blindside you. You may be the most hopeful, optimistic person, and suddenly you wake up with only darkness in your soul. It is awful.
When the children of Israel were taken captive by King Nebuchadnezzar and dragged away to Babylon, they were stricken with grief. They had lost their homeland. What did they have to live for? Most would never see Israel again. They spoke a foreign language, worshipped a foreign God, and were treated like second-class, foreign people. They had lost their homes, their jobs, and their land. They had lost their status. Someone wrote a song about it, and it is one of the darkest things in scripture. In fact, when someone calls Ecclesiastes a “dismal book,”[1] I wonder what they think of Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows … we hung our harps.
For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you …
O daughter of Babylon, …
How blessed will be the one who repays you …
How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock. Psalm 137:1-9.
This song is simple.
Verse one: We were too depressed to sing when we got to Babylon. We hung up our instruments and gave up music.
Verse two: We are loyal to Jerusalem. We would rather have a mute tongue and fingers that can’t play a note than sing songs for the Babylonians.
Verse three: In fact, the thing that would make us happy would be to grab the children of the Babylonians by the ankles and smash their skulls on the rocks. Then maybe we would have something to sing about.
Is this a dark song? Yes. God is using the Babylonians to punish Israel’s idolatry—and it is working. The people are miserable. But revenge is not the answer (nor is it an option, considering how badly the captives are outnumbered). The Babylonian captivity was God’s will, and those who even half-listen to the prophets recognize that.
But what can they do about their overwhelming, music-killing grief?
Ecclesiastes has the answer. Solomon’s book—written about 400 years before the Babylonian Captivity—begins by admitting that life can be extremely hard. Here are just a few of those hard truths: Life is not fair, random chance hurts even good people, everyone sins, governments are corrupt, education and wisdom can actually increase your sorrow, money never satisfies, nothing you achieve will ever be remembered, and when you die you will be forgotten.
Those are hard truths.
But Solomonic Wisdom includes the answer: CHOOSE JOY. Rejoice even in your circumstances. Even if you are overwhelmed. Even if you have lost your loved ones, your homeland, and your dreams. Though your dream may never come true, you can choose joy. You can remain miserable there in Babylon, living out your days as a foreigner, a suffering second-class citizen. Or you can choose hope. Solomon encourages gratitude and making the choice to enjoy life. I agree. (Do you want to stay miserable?)
- Enjoy your work! (Ecclesiastes 2:24).
- Enjoy your spouse and family! (9:9).
- Enjoy your food and drink! (8:15).
- Enjoy your youth! (11:9).
- Enjoy your old age! (11:8).
- Enjoy your prosperity! (7:14).
- Enjoy your struggles! (2:10).
Dear God, sometimes it hurts so much. Life can be so hard. So discouraging. There are hard days. Give us the wisdom and obedience to choose joy, to pray prayers of gratitude, to see the good you do for us each day. We know there is selfishness in us that can enjoy wallowing in grief. Help us choose the selflessness of joy and gratitude.
AΩ.
[1] The Awe of God: The Astounding Way a Healthy Fear of God Transforms Your Life, by John Bevere. This is an excellent book about the fear of God—a message we need now more than ever. I hope you will read it. But I disagree with Bevere’s reading of Ecclesiastes on page 5. It is not a “dismal book” but one bursting with hope, though a hope that may appeal most strongly to readers who have wrestled with the darkest truths of life.
Household Words: 