When the faithful are held in contempt

Sarah & I read this together this morning. It's a psalm that's not well known, but perhaps deserves more attention:

¹ I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.

² 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.

³ Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured much contempt.

⁴ We have endured much ridicule from the proud,
much contempt from the arrogant.

The problem is the contempt in which God's true & faithful people are held by those who claim to be God's people.

Of course we all think that we're the ones who are faithful and true, and those others who are not. But history shows that the faithful are those who stick with the truths which have always been taught. The unfaithful are those who invent new things to believe, or believe and behave like those who don't even claim to be God's people.

So we hold fast to 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints', and are held in contempt by those who have abandoned the faith and morality of God's word. And in that situation, we 'look up to the Lord whose throne is in heaven', we look to him to provide and to guide. We look to him in humility for mercy.

For more, see Hebrews 12:1ff.