Psalm 123
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to you,
to you who sit enthroned in heaven.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
3 Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,
for we have endured no end of contempt.
4 We have endured no end
of ridicule from the arrogant,
of contempt from the proud.
A Pilgrimage with the Psalms of Ascent - Service
In the face of challenge do you tend to think or work your way out? Do you consider the various ways the problem(s) could be solved, or do you just lean in and work hard? In the face of life’s challenges, the writer of Psalm 123 does neither, rather he takes the posture of a servant and lifts his eyes to God. Service requires thinking and doing, but Christian service begins with a posture of servanthood before God. But in our highly educated and capable culture is servanthood realistic or even healthy? Wouldn’t it be better to figure out what needs to get done and do it? And yet, as we listen to the news it would seem we can’t agree on what the problem is, or what should be done about it. As we continue through the Psalms of Ascent we witness a pilgrim who, in the face of unrelenting challenge, takes the posture of a slave before his master, a sheep before his shepherd, the saviour before his accusers, and says, “Lord have mercy…” Let’s join in worship and find out how and why we should do the same.
