Psalm 123

I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till He shows us His mercy.
Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, for we have endured much contempt.
We have endured much ridicule from the proud, much contempt from the arrogant.
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"Eye-hand coordination." That's what ran through my mind the entire time I was memorizing this psalm. When I memorize, I look for repeated words that can help me link sections of the passage. So as I studied this psalm to find memory cues, what quickly jumped out was the repetition of "eyes" and "hand".

I'm focusing on improving health lately, so eye-hand coordination is a concept I'm familiar with. It's one thing that can be an indicator of cognitive function as well as physical ability. This Psalm helps us to see that eye-hand coordination is significant spiritually as well.

At the heart of eye-hand coordination is a simple concept: Where are you looking? Where do you trust? Where do you look to have basic needs met. "Give us this day our daily bread." That's a Biblical prayer, and one that reminds us where we should be looking. Whether basic needs, significant problems like the Psalmist will address in the next chapter, or ridicule and contempt that he addresses here ... we need to look to one place: the hand of God.

The Psalmist's request is interesting. When he looks to God, he doesn't ask God to come against those who are ridiculing him. There's a Biblical basis to expect that God would take seriously ridicule and attacks on one of His own. Acts 9:4 records Jesus asking Saul "Why are you persecuting me?" when he was attacking Christians. Gen. 12:1-3 records God's call of Abram and His promise that those who bless Abram would be blessed and those who curse him would be cursed. As the descendant of Abram, the Psalmist could have prayed this passage and asked God to curse the enemy. In fact, we see other Psalms where the Psalmist does just that. But here, we see the Psalmist's cry at what I believe is a deeper heart level: mercy.

Mercy has been defined as "not getting what we deserve" while grace is "getting what we don't deserve". That's a good Biblical definition of each from a New Testament perspective. The Old Testament word for mercy, however, combines the concepts. So the Psalmist is saying, Lord, we're waiting on you until you give us what we don't deserve and not give us what we do deserve. It's a concept that is echoed three times in two verses; they beg for mercy because of the ridicule and contempt they have endured. They leave it in God's hands how that mercy will look.

Sometimes ridicule and contempt are important in shaping us. I love a quote from Francis Frangipane:

To inoculate me from the praise of man,
He baptized me in the criticism of man,
until I died to control of man.

If God knows that I need to be inoculated from the control of man, removing all ridicule and contempt would not be merciful. Yet in His mercy, God can strengthen me to focus on Him and enable me to learn the lessons I need to learn. Other times, God's mercy might step in and apply a balm to the relationship to end the contempt. Still other times, His mercy might remove me from the situation.

God has a character of mercy. He is ALWAYS merciful. Yet each of us have our own walk with God and our own lessons to learn. As a result, the application of His mercy will look different for everyone. When you cry out to God for mercy, He knows how to respond.