Sitting by the rivers of Babylon, the exiles remember Zion and weep. They can't sing the songs of their home in a foreign land because it would break them. There's something so tender in that image. They're physically alive but spiritually dying, separated from everything that made them who they are.
I know people who've experienced real exile. Immigrants who left everything to come here for survival. Refugees fleeing violence. People estranged from family and faith communities they loved. The psalm honors the depth of that loss without offering false comfort. Yes, you'll remember. Yes, it will hurt. That's what it means to lose your home.
What moves me is that this psalm was eventually sung again, in the temple, by people who'd been restored. So the exile wasn't permanent, even though it felt that way when they were in it. But the psalm doesn't promise that at the beginning. It just sits in the grief, fully present to how much it costs to be separated from what you love. That's where most of us live for a time anyway: in the middle, still remembering, not yet restored.
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