Recently I sat in the waiting room of a surgeon’s office. There was a sanitized version of an IRA song playing in the background. I looked around and realized I was the only one who understood the song. For eighteen hundred years, the Irish tried to get the British out. I mentioned it to the doctor and he said they played a variety of genre, so he didn’t know why it was playing. I don’t think he knew what it was about either.
Most people don’t know what they are listening to in those lyrics, but for some it has great meaning. Case in point is the song “Rivers of Babylon.” It is from the book of Psalms and speaks of a broken-hearted people who couldn’t sing a holy song.
Psalm 137:1-4
By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
Know your song and where it should be sung.
Give it some thought.
Gary