It happened again last week. I was reading a fitness training email. The writer recommended creating a lineup of songs for your workout. He suggested putting particularly powerful songs at points where you need extra motivation.

Most of us understand that idea. Songs capture our memories and heal our hearts and power our bodies and challenge our minds. Sometimes we get ambushed by songs. Sometimes we are strategic. (I wrote many papers to Beethoven’s 6th Symphony in college.)

I am guessing-and it is just guessing-that the idea of inspiring songs helps explain Nehemiah’s passionate response when he heard from his brother that the walls of Jerusalem were still wrecked. (Nehemiah 1 will give you the background, and i’ll talk about it soon).

What if Nehemiah grew up learning the pilgrimage songbook (Psalms 120-134)? These are the songs sung by Jewish pilgrims as they made their annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  Every kid in Sabbath school would have learned them as a way to remember Jerusalem. Even during decades of exile, when going back wasn’t possible, each generation would teach the songs to the next generation.

Imagine, for example, if you had learned these words from Psalm 122:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity.

And you had sung them knowing that your brother was living there, 900 miles away. And then he came and said, “the walls are still fallen down.”

Wouldn’t you ache, too? And wonder what was wrong? And cry out to God, wondering how to help?

It’s Monday. What songs are you singing?