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.
Psalm 123
Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.
Psalm 77:19
And the sea appears to be the most trackless of worlds! The sea is the very symbol of mystery, the grim dwelling-house of the innumerable things that have been lost. But God’s way moves here and there across this trackless wild. God is never lost among our mysteries. He knows His way about. When we are bewildered He sees the road, and He sees the end even from the beginning. Even the sea, in every part of it, is the Lord’s highway. When His way is in the sea we cannot trace it. Mystery is part of our appointed discipline.
J.H. Jowett (from Daily Meditation. 1914)
Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge uprightly among men?
No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence
on the earth. Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they
are wayward and speak lies.
Their venom is like the venom of a snake,
like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears, that will not heed
the tune of the charmer, however skillful the enchanter may be.
Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; tear out, O Lord, the fangs
of the lions!
Let them vanish like water that flows away…
Then men will say, “Surely the righteous still are
rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.”
Psalm 58:1-7; 11
Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom,
prisoners suffering in iron chains,
for they had rebelled against the words of God
and despised the counsel of the Most High.
Psalm 107:10,11
The cell is dark of itself, and the fear of
execution casts a still denser gloom over the
prison. Such is the cruelty of man to man that
tens of thousands have been made to linger in
places only fit to be tombs; unhealthy, suffocating,
filthy sepulchres, where they have sickened and
died of broken hearts.
The state of a soul under
conviction of sin is forcibly symbolized by such a
condition; persons in that state cannot see the promises
which would yield them comfort, they sit still in the
inactivity of despair, they fear the approach of judgment,
and are thereby as much distressed as if they were at
death’s door.
God’s words are not to be trifled with, and those who
venture on such rebellion will bring themselves into bondage.
When men do not follow the divine counsel they give the most
practical proof of their contempt for it. Those who will not
be bound by God’s law will, ere long, be bound by the fetters of
judgment. There is too much contemning of the divine counsel,
even among Christians, and hence so few of them know the liberty
where with Christ makes us free.
Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) From The Treasury of David p.401 on Psalm 107:10,11
