The following entries are excerpts from Chad Bird’s new book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of the Psalms (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 311 and 335
Psalm 123: Till He Has Mercy Upon Us
The overall tone of Psalm 123 is “I’m Tired, God.” If that does not resonate with you, at least some of the time, then I suggest you belt out a hearty doxology, for yours is a rare and blissful life. For most of us, “I’m tired, God,” is a confession that is painfully and perennially true. Tired of “the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud” (123:4). Tired of battling our dogged sinful nature every hour of every day, with a short list of triumphs and a long list of letdowns.
Tired of one limp forward and two limps back as we slog our way through the shadowlands of grief. Tired of splintered families, stabbing loneliness, and inner peace that always seems torturously out of reach. “Our soul has had more than enough…” (123:4). I’m tired, God. The hardest word in Psalm 123 is in the second verse: “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.” The hard word is “till.” It is a word of waiting. The mercy is “out for delivery,” but the driver hasn’t arrived. Until he does, mercy is believed, but it is not felt in the gut, gripped in the hand. “O you who are enthroned in the heavens,” how long must we lift up our eyes with our hearts weighed down (123:1)? “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt” (123:3).
So till God has mercy upon us—a mercy that un-tires us, brightens our eyes, and lifts our spirits—we lift up our eyes to God enthroned upon the cross. Jesus is mercy with skin on. Mercy that bleeds, dies, and rises for us. Jesus, who has more than enough love for each of us, will hold us with unseen hands till better days come.
Psalm 136:1–3: For His Steadfast Love Endures Forever
When Victor Frankl was in a Nazi concentration camp, he became acutely aware that prisoners who stared into the future as a black void, with nothing to offer them, would soon die. “It is a
peculiarity of man,” he wrote, “that he can only live by looking to the future.” Put another way, we need something external to ourselves, bigger than the Me, longer than the Now, into which we can fling the anchor of our hope. When that happens, our chins are pulled up from gazing
inward to seeing outward. A bad day, even a horrible day, becomes not our whole universe, but one day in a calendar that contains better days to come. We live best, we hope more, we become more fully who God wants us to be under a banner that waves a truth that helps us to see past the hurts, confusions, and eclipses of life. Then we can spy a grander vision of the world and our place in it.
The God of gods and Lord of lords to whom we give thanks is not a malicious tyrant or an apathetic power, but the steadfast Lover of humanity.
Psalm 136 waves such a banner. It is found at the close of all its verses: “For his steadfast love endures forever.” Six words in English, only three in Hebrew, yet they become the refrain from heaven that interprets history, defines God’s heart, and anchors us to something eternal and unchanging. The God of gods and Lord of lords to whom we give thanks is not a malicious tyrant or an apathetic power, but the steadfast Lover of humanity. His love is not momentary, not fickle, but covenantal and unwavering.
Why are you here? Because the steadfast love of the Lord wanted you here. Do you matter? The steadfast love of the Lord says you do. The steadfast love of the Father positions you in the unending life of Christ, bigger than the Me, longer than the Now, where you find purpose, meaning, joy, and hope. Being found in Christ (Phil. 3:9), we find that both who we are and what we do have an importance that, like divine love, endures forever.