SHOUT FOR JOY
Getting the 8pm milk my MP3 player, having finished the Andrew Sandlin addresses to young people on the subject of Plato, Ruessau (sp?) and Kirkegarde (boy, was that audience LOUD - they cheered and whooped at the start and close of every message!), switched on to another series - also by Sandlin. I don't like change and when he announced the subject was 'the distinctives of the reformed faith', I groaned (sorry!). I did hear him out while he read the first part of Psalm 115. Then I went on to read this Psalm and the next. On the basis of these considerations I dropped off to sleep.

I switched the disc in my MP3 player and decided upon listening to the new Jamie Soles CD instead while doing the 1.30am feed. The song entitled 'shouts of Joy' begins with what sounds like a recording of a football crowd cheering !!! Some will remember me having waxed eloquent about my ASTONISHEMENT on a recent Costco visit on a Saturday afternoon. The carpark was full of football-goers and when we came out of the store the game was evidently underway. The usual buzz of the motorway was drowned out by a loud roar of (at least half, I suppose) the crowd in the nearby stadium - I thought at first there was a jet landing. Never having been to a football match (notwithstanding the fact that I came from Manchester!)I have only heard these roars on the TV. BEing this close to them was something else - there was a kind of electricity in the air. At long last I could begin to understand why droves of men and boys (and some women) plod along in the direction of the stadium to stand with others, to feel as one and rejoice as one.
So what has all this to do with Psalm 126? Well, surely the fact that (v.3) they were 'filled with joy' must have meant that they made some NOISE about it. Not, I daresay, subdued, rational, calm, sedate noise either. NO. I have been in the British museum and seen the carvings depicting the captivity of Babylon - Israelites, all shapes and sizes, plodding along cheerlessly, leaving their beloved land behind them. I can easily imagine the terror and despair these folks must have felt, well, Psalm 126 is the flip-side of this story so I reckon they hugged one another, sang at the top of their voices and gave hearty cheers, perhaps even as 'one man' - like the football supporters.
I haven't often been in a crowd like that but I went to a pop concert once and, in spite of myself, found myself being as noisy as everyone else (well, perhaps, ALMOST!) - I wondered WHY afterwards! Maybe we should be a little more noisy, as the people of God and perhaps we would fortify the faint-hearted and make the unbelieving neighbourhood aware that we have something to shout about!