Grains of Sand

Pixabay Nobody enjoys the presence of a complainer, but most people complain. And we usually tend to complain to the wrong person. We give the clerk a hard time when it isn't the clerk who makes the policy or decides when, and by how much, to change the prices. We tear a strip off a local politician about some decision the government made—a government whose party he might not even be a member of. David did a fair bit of complaining. The psalms are a testimony to that. David spent a fair bit of time on the run from his enemies. When we come to Psalm 142 we find the king-designate in a cave hiding from King Saul. While we have a record of his complaint, it's a good thing he didn't complain out loud about his feelings to his followers—they had a tendency to "go above and beyond" for David and would gladly have done whatever was necessary to remove Saul, his prodigy, and his followers from the earth. Those we complain to are usually not that capable—happil...

Google Images Judah has fallen—several times! In a succession of invasions, the Babylonians, as instruments of God’s judgment, have taken the royal city. They have removed most of the inhabitants and taken them into captivity. Only the poorest are left behind (2 Kings 25:12). But what is worse is the total destruction and dismantling of the city and the temple as described in 2 Kings 24 and 25. Solomon’s glorious expression of worship is reduced to a pile of pebbles and its riches are either destroyed or carried away. In passages like Psalm 137 we discover the depth of the despair all this caused in the Hebrews. The were devastated. But to add insult to injury the captives were commanded by their captors to sing songs! How could they be expected to sing under these circumstances? “ By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing ...