LONGING FOR HOME

LONGING FOR HOME
Psalm 137:1
“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.”  

The psalmist brings together two places, Babylon and Zion: one near and the other distant. Yet they may well be interchanged: the one near is far, and the far is near. Sitting in Babylon, weeping, and remembering Zion--one is home and yet not home; the other is home, and yet is not. What a paradox when one sits in a foreign land longing for one’s homeland!

My wife and I relocated from Singapore to Hawaii to answer a call to ministry. After ten years in Maui, we thought we could retire in paradise. We bought a dream house, saw it built from scratch, and moved in. While we loved the weather and culture, and enjoyed the ministry, our hearts told us we were not home. Every National Day in Singapore, when the song “Home” was sung, tears welled up in our eyes. 

This is home truly, where I know I must be
Where my dreams wait for me, where the river always flows
This is home surely, as my senses tell me
This is where I won’t be alone, for this is where I know I’m home. 

The exiles longed for a home taken from them, and a song stolen from them. “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” their captors asked. “How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?” (vv.3-4) The request was made in mirth and heard as mockery. Raw emotions broke loose as the exiles cried for justice against their oppressors. 

The psalm is a lament, hauntingly sad, and painfully angry. It could well be our song as exiles in this world (I Pet 1.1), longing for our home on the other side of eternity. We mourn because what we see is not what should be. We long for home, for peace in our hearts, and for justice in our world. But that longing may never be met, at least not here and now. As C. S. Lewis reminds us, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that we were made for another world.”

Not home, not yet