My personal remake of Psalm 137:1-6.  It seems timely as we enter the Christmas season/extravagant spending season. :)

 Surrounded by a culture of excess, I wrap my arms around my middle and strive to think of what Heaven will really be like.

I sing my songs of praise, but at times the melody is drowned out by my pain.
My scoffers shake their heads sadly at my "ignorance" or openly ridicule my choice to live for that which I have not seen.  A culture of excess and intelligentsia has little room or need of Jesus. That's what they tell themselves as they use money as a balm over the emptiness they have grown used to ignoring, or fill it with yet another philosophical idea to debate among their elite groups.

 What keeps the song in my heart when the hurt surrounds me--both my own and every other face I encounter along the way?  The smiles are both a mask and real.

This is not my home! I do not belong here!  I will never fit in! Yet I get confused and try to be a chameleon and live in this Babylon without sticking out like a sore thumb. I forget for a moment and try to make myself comfortable in this foreign soil.

Give me a renewed sense of culture shock Lord.  Let me live in daily remembrance that you have called me apart and I walk by faith and not by sight.