When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. – Psalm 126:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 29, 2019): Psalm 126

I am a dreamer. I don’t remember a time that I have not been accompanied by my dreams. I have many aspirations for the future. In fact, I think I would die if I did not have my hopes and plans for tomorrow. It is my dreams that get me out of bed in the morning. And it is my dreams that keep me motivated during the day. My dreams, even the silly ones, are an essential part of who I am. And I can’t imagine what it might be like not to have them.

But the Psalmist had apparently experienced a time when the dream was missing. It was a time when thinking about the future just didn’t make any sense, because the pain of the present made the possibility of tomorrow seem so far away. It is the challenge of anyone who suffers from depression in our own culture. For whatever reason, and sometimes for no reason at all, the dream has died and tomorrow seems like it is an unattainable ideal. The future becomes the undiscovered country, which we will never reach because it has become unreachable. It is a place where there are no dreamers.  

The dating of the Psalms is hard, and often we are attracted by the significant events that we know, but there are so many variables and events that are essential to the biblical story, but about which we have no knowledge. We are placing it here, but it could easily be placed at the end of the time period covered by the Hebrew Bible as the people of Israel are returning home from the Babylonian captivity. Or maybe this is a prophecy of that time, of what it might be like to be removed from your home and forced to move to a different city where you feel that you no longer possess a future. And then, suddenly, the time comes when you can return home.

But whatever the historical reality of the Psalmist might be, the dream of the future has been absent in his life for a long time. But now, Zion, likely the City of David, Jerusalem, had been given back its hope. And because the City of David had hope, the nation had hope. And to the Psalmist, the dream that made life worth living has finally returned, and the Psalmist once again can state emphatically that he is a dreamer.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 129 & 130