Like those who dream
The return to Zion
Seventy years is long enough to forget that exile ends. A generation born in Babylon had never seen Zion; they knew the songs of home only as their parents' grief, the harps hung on the willows, the question of how to sing the LORD's song in a strange land. And then the impossible word arrives: you may go home. The psalm that remembers it does not reach first for triumph. It reaches for a stranger feeling — we were like those who dream. Not we rejoiced, not we marched out in glory, but we walked around dazed, unsure the ground was real, the way you move through the first minutes of waking when the good news has not yet been believed by the body. The mouth, the psalm says, filled with laughter; the tongue with singing. But underneath the laughter is the disbelief that makes the laughter what it is. The deliverance was too long-prayed and too far gone to trust on first sight. So they pinched themselves and laughed and could only say the plainest true thing there was to say: the LORD has done great things for us. The exile they had stopped expecting to end had ended.
“When the LORD brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream.”
— The pilgrims' psalm — Psalm 126:1 (WEB)
“The LORD has done great things for us, and we are glad.”
This is Disorientation turning toward dawn at its most communal — a whole people's wilderness actually ending. The phase here asks you not to manufacture the turn but to recognize it, and to let yourself believe a deliverance too large for your shrunken hope. The dawn arrives looking so improbable that the first faithful response is dazed, disbelieving gladness.
When the reversal finally comes after the long wait, you may not trust it. You may move through it dazed, braced for it to vanish, suspicious of your own happiness, unable to feel the clean joy you once pictured. That is not a failure of faith. It is the honest jolt of a rescue larger than the size your hope had shrunk to, the response of someone for whom the deliverance was too long-prayed and too far gone to believe on first sight. The deeper danger of the long night was never despair; it was quietly settling into Babylon and calling more naive. So let yourself be glad slowly. There is a particular danger in a long disorientation, and it is not despair.
Despair at least keeps the question alive. The deeper danger is that you quietly stop expecting the turn at all — you make a permanent home in Babylon, decorate the captivity, and call wanting more naive. The returning exiles had every reason to have done exactly that. Seventy years is a lifetime. And the grace of this psalm is that it does not scold them for the dazed disbelief; it honors it. The dreamlike quality is not weak faith. It is the honest response of people for whom the rescue is genuinely too large for the size their hope had shrunk to. So if God brings the reversal you had given up daring to name, you may not feel the clean joy you once imagined.
You may feel unsteady, suspicious of your own happiness, half-waiting for it to dissolve. Laughter and disbelief can share one mouth. The dream, this time, is true, and you can say the plain thing: He has done great things. The dream is real this time, and all the moment asks of you is the sentence the exiles found: the LORD has done great things.
The Church can stay in exile so long it forgets exile has an end, until renewal feels naive and Babylon feels permanent and wanting more seems a thing for younger, simpler believers. Across its history the Body has made homes in its captivities and decorated them. Psalm 126 is the whole Church's memory against that forgetting: the LORD brought a whole people home, and they were like those who dream. Western and global Christianity, holding this hope through a long shaking, keep alive the sentence the Body will one day say dazed and laughing before a watching world, the LORD has done great things for us. The exile the Church had stopped expecting to end is not beyond ending.
Babylon felt unshakable for seventy years, and it was removed. What endures is not any captivity, however long, but the LORD who ends exiles. What can be shaken — even a settled, decorated, lifelong captivity — is shaken loose so that the unshakable thing stands clear: a God who still does great things, and brings His people home.
- Have I quietly stopped expecting my exile to end, and started decorating Babylon as if it were home?
- If God brought the reversal I had given up naming, would I trust it, or brace for it to dissolve?
- Can I say, even dazed and half-disbelieving, that the LORD has done great things for me?
Lord, my exile has gone on so long I had nearly stopped expecting it to end. Forgive me for making a home in Babylon and calling hope naive. Bring me back to Zion. And when You do, steady my dazed heart to say the true thing: the LORD has done great things for us. Amen.