NOTES for Psa 126
It is a good thing to remember past joy, prolonging the joy itself and softening the bitterness of sorrowful days. Yet joyful memories can also become a pledge of the future triumph of those who suffer today. This is not only because those who mourn have been promised that they will be comforted, but also because in the pages of the Bible we can see numerous testimonies born of experience to a joy that came, in spite of everything, after many immense and innumerable hardships.
It is no accident at all that our faith is historical. Those who seek only commandments and recommendations in divinely inspired texts may not immediately notice how God reveals Himself in history. Sacred history itself is not a collection of barren memories or a neurotic chewing over of the past, but a body of events whose remembrance we need both today and in the future, within the perspective of humanity's continuing journey. At the same time, it is confirmation that the Lord is with us today just as He was with His faithful throughout all the centuries that have passed.