Psalm 123:3 –
Have mercy on us, LORD, have mercy, for we have had our fill of contempt.
First I need to make a correction. In reaching 121:7 and the term “ALL harm” I found a translation that implied something more sublime in the Douay-Rheims translation. In researching this chapter I noticed a big difference between this chapter and the one in Douay-Rheims. I noticed that translation is missing a Psalm, so 120:7 in Douay-Rheims does state “all evil”. So all wins! Unpacked from yesterday “thought”, we determined the Psalms were more “examples” of prayer and not necessarily “truths”.
This chapter is shows what many of us experience sometime in our life, with people mocking us. As followers of an unseen God who has done so many great things yet cannot be proven concretely, we tend to get this often. You have science for example stating evolution is fact, yet many animals prove evolution wrong. Look at the giraffe, its long neck requires a strong heart to get blood to its brain. If it bends down gravity now works with the strong heart and the head would get too much blood too fast and therefore the giraffe die. Never able to “evolve” since “evolution” would stop the neck from growing since the “long necks” would die quickly and that “genetic defect” would not continue.
We can see the intricate system of veins and dampers the giraffe has to circulate blood could not have evolved, rater “engineered”. Back to the verse now! We also tend to get mocked by people who see Christianity as too restrictive or foolish. In a way I was like this when I was younger; I did not dismiss God’s existence but choose to not follow God. Now I never “mocked” believers, but decided to “have fun” and show “contempt” for their beliefs. I figured once saved always saved … may past, present and future sins were covers … so have fun now.
Boy did I miss the boat and now am praying for mercy not only for our family. I also pray this for our nation who appears to be overcome by people mocking our beliefs. We have been crammed into the church box and we keep getting pushed back, even while exercising “free speech!” Israel has always had this problem surrounded by people trying to destroy their way of life. So in most cases this “contempt” is not just bad feeling but suppression of our beliefs to out and out genocide. So pray for mercy on us and the people condemning our beliefs.