Growing with the Lord

9/21/26 Daniel 7,8; Psalms 137; Luke 4 These texts move through exile’s despair toward ultimate vindication—from the exiles’ anguished present, through visionary assurance of God’s sovereignty, to the arrival of the One who will restore what was lost. Psalm 137 captures the raw pain of displacement: the exiles sit weeping by Babylon’s rivers, their instruments silenced on trees, unable to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land. This is not theological reflection but visceral grief—the loss of home, worship, and identity. The psalmist vows that forgetting Jerusalem would mean losing his own capacity for joy and skill. ( Ps 137 ) The psalm’s closing imprecations reflect the depth of their suffering, though they also reveal a people struggling with bitterness rather than faith. Daniel’s vision presents four massive beasts emerging from the sea, each more terrifying than the last. ( Dan 7–8 ) The fourth beast is particularly dreadful—with iron teeth, devouring and crushing all before ...