When the Wall Came Down

On the evening of November 9, 1989, East Berliners gathered at the checkpoints along the Berlin Wall, scarcely believing the announcement they had heard on television. For twenty-eight years, that concrete barrier had divided families, separated mothers from daughters, and turned a single city into two worlds. Thousands had risked death to cross it. Hundreds had died trying.

When the border guards finally stepped aside, the crowds surged through with tears streaming down their faces. Strangers embraced. Families who had not touched each other in decades held on and would not let go. One elderly woman, reunited with her sister after twenty-six years, told a reporter through sobs, "I thought this day would never come. It feels like a dream."

Like a dream. The very words the psalmist chose. "When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy."

Psalm 126 was written by people who knew the long ache of exile and the shock of homecoming. They had sown their seeds in Babylonian soil with tears running into the furrows. And then God turned everything around, and the harvest came — not in trickles, but in sheaves so heavy they could barely carry them home.

Whatever exile you are enduring today, the God who restores is not finished with your story.