Psalm 123:1-4
Our First Hope

A Song of Ascents.

To you I do lift up my eyes,
       you who sit in the heavens.
Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
       as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress;
       so our eyes look to Yahweh, our God,
       until he has mercy on us.
Have mercy on us, Yahweh, have mercy on us,
       for we have endured much contempt.
Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scoffing of those who are at ease,
       with the contempt of the proud.

World English Bible

"Have mercy on us!" We may not recognize this heartfelt cry in these words, but every person has expressed this thought before. This Hebrew phrase could also be read to mean be gracious to us, show favor to us, and feel pity for us. These words are uttered by those who have given up on resolving or negotiating themselves out of their situation. These words are a plea for Someone much bigger to be kind.

We usually don't find ourselves at that point in our lives without a great struggle. We fight for our pride and self-determination, we fight to set our own goals and make our own plans, and we fight to maintain the sense that we can take care of ourselves. We particularly don't accept easily the metaphor in this psalm that describes us as slaves in the service of a master or mistress. Our society has improved so that we now have a revulsion towards slavery of one person to another, but we are not equals of God. The imagery in Jeremiah 18 describes our relationship to God as clay in the hands of a potter, but we often resist being willing and pliable clay.

That's why the label on this brief psalm seems a bit out of place, compared to the emotions we read between the lines of the psalm. A song of "ascents" was sung by Hebrews making their journey to the major religious festivals in Jerusalem, often expressing their anticipation of being in the Temple. The purpose of this psalm was to prepare their minds and hearts for this worship experience.

We find an interesting truth about God's relationship with us when we combine the plea for mercy with the preparation for worship in this psalm. Mercy is not supposed to be a cry for desperation, but our primary sustaining force. God does not want us to ask for help when we have exhausted all our other options, but when we face every circumstance. God is faithful to draw us close when we face life's crises, but God longs to draw us close in every situation. It even is an act of worship to abandon ourselves to what Grace will do in our lives. Rather than being an act of desperation and failure, this is an act of living to the fullest.

This is similar to how we usually process sin and guilt. When we admit our failures or acknowledge our sins with a focus towards ourselves, we might strengthen a detrimental self-loathing in our lives or steel ourselves in arrogance to defend our relative merits or our justifiable actions. In contrast, when we admit our failures and acknowledge our sins with a focus towards God, Grace renews us and carries us into the presence of God.

This idea of worship as begging seems out of place, and it is. We find that we have to beg those who do not want to help us, so that we might persuade them to offer at least some of what we need. Not so with God! Instead, we need to beg ourselves to drop our pretentiousness and call expectantly on God as our first and best hope for every step of our lives.