Covenant Devotional #3 - Psalm 123

To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
Behold, as the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maidservant
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Our soul has had more than enough
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

(Psalm 123 ESV)

Waiting. How much of life is consumed with waiting? Waiting for the next season. Waiting for this one to pass. Waiting for the “to do” list to shrink, for the house to be clean, for the next vacation, next holiday, the next moment of reprieve. How much of life is just spent waiting for relief, in one form or another?

“Carpe Diem! Live for the moment!”; our motivational posters cry out, but the truth remains that we are rarely - if ever - fully present for the day or moment at hand. We are simply biding time: waiting. How might we ever learn what it means to stop waiting and begin to genuinely live?

What we wait for matters. As people created for another kind of world, it may be that we are hard-wired for longing, but it is in discovering the rightful center of our ultimate longing that we are set free to live richly and fully in the midst of all our lesser wants. It is in waiting upon the LORD that we learn to wait well.