Faith in the In-Between: What Psalm 137 Teaches Us About Pain, Anger, and Hope
There are seasons in life when it is easy to give thanks.
When a prayer is answered, a difficult season ends, a relationship is restored, or something we have been waiting for finally happens, gratitude seems natural.
But what about the seasons in between?
What do we do when God has not answered yet? When the pain is still fresh? When memories still hurt? When we are waiting for justice, healing, or restoration?
Psalm 137 speaks directly into those uncomfortable places.
It is a psalm for people who are not yet beyond the pain.
We Often Want to Skip the Hard Places
Psalm 136 ends with the beautiful declaration that God's steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 138 begins with thanksgiving to the Lord with the whole heart.
But between them is Psalm 137.
That is significant.
The Bible does not only give us songs for celebration. It also gives us songs for grief, confusion, anger, and waiting.
Sometimes Christians can feel pressure to move quickly from pain to gratitude.
“Be thankful.”
“Trust God.”
“Everything will be okay.”
These statements may contain truth, but sometimes they can be spoken too quickly.
The Bible does not tell us to pretend that suffering does not hurt.
Psalm 137 shows us something different: faith does not require us to deny our pain.
The people of God sat beside the rivers of Babylon and wept when they remembered Jerusalem. They had experienced destruction, displacement, and loss. Their memories were not pleasant memories.
And God allowed their painful words to become part of Scripture.
That is deeply comforting to me.
It means that when I am hurting, I do not have to hide my emotions from God.
There Is a Time to Put Down the Instrument
One of the most powerful images in Psalm 137 is the Israelites hanging their instruments on the trees.
Their captors wanted them to sing joyful songs from Jerusalem.
But they could not.
“How shall we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?”
There are times when we sing.
There are also times when we are silent.
There are moments when worship comes naturally, and there are moments when worship feels difficult.
I think this is important because Christians sometimes believe that having faith means always feeling joyful.
But biblical faith is not pretending.
The Israelites were not rejecting God simply because they could not sing a happy song in the middle of their suffering.
They were acknowledging the reality of what had happened.
There is something honest about saying:
“Lord, I believe in You, but this hurts.”
That is still faith.
But Don't Hang Up Your Instrument Forever
There is another danger.
Pain can cause us not only to stop singing temporarily but to stop believing altogether.
The psalmist refuses to forget Jerusalem.
He says that if he forgets Jerusalem, he would rather lose his ability to play and sing.
Why?
Because Jerusalem represented more than a city.
It represented his identity as one of God's people and the place where God had made His dwelling known.
The message is powerful:
Pain should not cause us to forget who we are and whom we belong to.
There may be seasons when we cannot sing loudly.
There may be seasons when our prayers are short.
There may be seasons when we have more questions than answers.
But we should not walk away from God.
We can put the instrument down for a moment.
We should not throw it away.
What Are We Holding On To?
This part of the sermon made me examine my own priorities.
The psalmist says that Jerusalem is above his “highest joy.”
That raises an uncomfortable question:
What is my highest joy?
Is it my health?
My family?
My career?
Financial security?
A comfortable home?
Success?
The approval of other people?
All of these things can be good gifts.
But good gifts can become dangerous when they become more important to us than God Himself.
Psalm 137 reminds me that my deepest identity cannot depend on circumstances.
Everything around me can change.
My plans can change.
My health can change.
My finances can change.
My relationships can change.
But my identity as someone who belongs to God is not supposed to depend on whether life is going according to my plan.
That is a difficult truth—but also a deeply hopeful one.
What Do We Do With Anger?
The ending of Psalm 137 is probably one of the most difficult passages in the Psalms.
The psalmist cries out for justice against Babylon.
At first, these words can feel shocking.
How can such strong anger belong in the Bible?
But perhaps the psalm teaches us something important about anger.
Anger is often our response when we recognize that something is deeply wrong.
When someone is abused, oppressed, or violently harmed, anger says:
“This is not right.”
The problem is not simply that we feel anger.
The question is what we do with it.
The psalmist does not take vengeance into his own hands.
He brings his anger to God.
He asks God to remember.
He asks God to judge.
That distinction matters.
Give Your Anger to God
Romans 12 teaches Christians not to take revenge but to leave room for God's judgment.
This gives Psalm 137 a different perspective.
The psalmist is essentially saying:
“God, You see what happened. You know the injustice. Please make it right.”
That is different from saying:
“I will make it right myself.”
There is a profound difference between those two responses.
When we take revenge, we place ourselves in the position of judge.
When we bring our anger to God, we acknowledge that He sees what we cannot fully see and that His justice is greater than ours.
This does not mean that injustice does not matter.
It means that we trust God enough to place ultimate justice in His hands.
The Cross Changes How We Wait
The Christian story does not end with Babylon.
It does not end with suffering.
And it does not end with unanswered prayers.
At the cross, justice and mercy meet.
Jesus Himself entered into suffering, rejection, injustice, and death.
That means God is not distant from human suffering.
He knows what it means to suffer.
And because Jesus rose from the dead, Christians have a reason to hope even when the present situation does not look hopeful.
We may still be living in the “in-between.”
But the “in-between” is not the end.
There is a great “beyond” coming.
What Psalm 137 Teaches Me
Psalm 137 has changed the way I think about suffering.
I do not need to rush through pain simply because I am a Christian.
I can remember.
I can grieve.
I can ask difficult questions.
I can even bring my anger honestly before God.
But I also need to be careful not to allow pain to become the place where I permanently remain.
There is a difference between going through suffering with God and walking away from God because of suffering.
The first can strengthen faith.
The second destroys it.
Perhaps this is why Psalm 137 belongs between Psalm 136 and Psalm 138.
There is thanksgiving before the pain.
There is pain in the middle.
And there is thanksgiving again beyond the pain.
The message is not:
“Just be thankful.”
The deeper message is:
“Keep trusting God while you are waiting for the thanksgiving that has not yet come.”
Faith in the In-Between
Most of us will experience an “in-between” season at some point.
A prayer that has not been answered.
A relationship that has not been restored.
A loss that still hurts.
An injustice that has not been corrected.
A future that remains uncertain.
Psalm 137 reminds us that these places do not make us less faithful.
They are places where faith can become more honest.
We do not have to pretend that everything is fine.
We can sit beside the rivers of Babylon and weep.
We can tell God that we are angry.
We can ask Him to remember.
And then, even when we cannot see the way forward, we can choose not to forget Him.
Because the story does not end in Babylon.
The “in-between” is not the destination.
One day, the pain will be beyond us.
And when that day comes, we will understand more fully what the psalmist has been declaring all along:
“His steadfast love endures forever.”
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