Dec 30, 2022
“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 mercy” (Psalm 123:2).
In the Old Testament there is no finer picture of a servant at prayer than what is pictured in this psalm. In the culture of the ancient Near East, a master spoke to a slave as little as possible, especially during a meal.
A good servant learned to watch the master closely, with a complete, rapt attention. All that should ever be required was a nod of the head, a look, the slightest hand gesture. If the master was forced to speak, the servant had already failed.
A good servant learned to know the mind of the master. That's the way the psalmist waits on God: singleness of mind, not looking to the left or the right, not distracted-just relentlessly attentive to the master's will and desire.
When a massive army once made its move toward Jerusalem to conquer and destroy it, king Jehoshaphat prayed to the Lord, his Master: "O our God, won't you stop them? We are powerless against this mighty army that is about to attack us. We do not know what to do, but we are looking to you for help" (2 Chronicles 20:12).
Here it is, the posture of a praying servant. What do we do when we don't know what to do? We keep watching and waiting on the Lord. Of course, we act and decide as the situation demands, but we do so in the full knowledge that everything we do, we do before the Lord, and we are accountable to him. Jesus put it rather starkly, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty’” (Luke 17:10).
It is true that we are more than servants; Jesus also calls us friends (John 15:14-15). But even here the aspect of servanthood is not far, “You are my friends if you do what I command”. What Jesus specifies is that he tells us God’s business. We know it, we don’t have to guess at it. And we are called to do it. Was Jesus thinking of the posture of this psalmist when he told us to "seek first the Kingdom of God"?
Many of us have been in situations feeling like we are in over our heads. We would love to swim gently through life being fully capable to ride every little ripple that comes our way. It seems that God keeps pulling us into deeper waters where our dependence on Him must grow.
As we come to the end of a year and prepare for the next, we often take stock of our lives. We assess how we have lived and make commitments for the year to come. It would be beneficial to ponder what our posture before the Lord has been and will be. This matter of being God’s servants is countercultural. As I was growing up, Christians often encouraged each other to live counter culturally. Rarely, did we explore what that meant. Being anyone’s servant is anathema in our culture. We are all meant to be free and self-determining individuals. But we Christians do not truly believe that. We take our lead from Jesus. God gets to tell us how to live.
We are servants of the Lord, and if we are wise servants we will fix our eyes on him, "just as servants keep their eyes on their master." We will meditate on his Word and pray it back to him. To do the will of the Lord, we need to know the will of the Lord. We must soak in Scripture to know the mind of our master.
Perspective is everything. Many have been taught to pray with eyes closed and hands folded: a posture of reverence. But what if there is more than one posture of reverence. What about hands uplifted, face turned up, eyes focussed on our Master, eager to do his will?