Psalm 123: an unfinished journey into being seen and accepted

 


Unto You I lift up my eyes,

Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters,
As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
So our eyes look to the Lord our God,
Until He has mercy on us.

For we are exceedingly filled with contempt.
With the scorn of those who are at ease,
With the contempt of the proud.
O You who dwell in the heavens.

As I was reflecting on this psalm, I found myself at Cambridge Pride. I watched my fabulous daughter, Carys, performing on stage with "Sing Out Cambridge" and I joined the parade, walking alongside her and many others through the centre of Cambridge. There were flags and feathers, music and dancing, protest signs and prayerful hearts.

And as the crowd surged around me — joyful, defiant, deeply human — I realised that Psalm 123 speaks directly into this moment.

It is a psalm of lifting our eyes. Of facing down contempt. Of longing for mercy not just privately, but together — out loud, in colour, in community.

This is a reflective study of Psalm 123 with that context in mind — read through the lens of Pride: as a Christian response to oppression, as a prayer for mercy and justice, and as a celebration of identity that refuses to be silenced.



“Unto You I lift up my eyes, O You who dwell in the heavens.”


The psalm begins in the first person singular — “I lift up MY eyes.”

This is a personal act of defiant hope. One person, surrounded by contempt, chooses not to look down in shame, but upward in faith. Not to the oppressors, but beyond them, to the One who sees and affirms them.  

At Pride, this is the raised head, the glittered cheek, the steady step forward.


As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
So our eyes look to the Lord our God,
Until He has mercy on us.

Then the voice shifts: “OUR eyes.” The singular becomes plural. This is no longer one voice — it’s a community looking up together.

The metaphor of servants watching the hand of their master and a maid watching the hand of her mistress is an image of vulnerability and expectation — not so much about grovelling, but about attentive waiting. A refusal to look to those who abuse power, and a decision to look only to God for justice, to look beyond those who think they "own" me to the one who knows me.  And I don't do this alone.

In the Pride march, this is solidarity. “I don’t walk alone. We are many. We are waiting together.”


For we are exceedingly filled with contempt.
With the scorn of those who are at ease,
With the contempt of the proud.
O You who dwell in the heavens.


This is the heart-cry of the oppressed.

Contempt here means scorn, dismissal, ridicule — not just personal, but systemic:

  • The mockery of trans identities in politics and media
  • The silence of churches that won’t name LGBTQ+ siblings
  • The daily indignities of being “tolerated” but not welcomed

This verse doesn’t flinch. It names the pain.  “We are filled with this. To the brim. Enough.”  Yet the cry for mercy is not despair — it’s hope refusing to die.

Here, the psalm ends with a full naming of the oppressors:

  • Those at ease — the privileged who don’t feel the weight of contempt.
  • The proud — not the pride of joyful self-expression, but the arrogance of those who believe they know best and wield that power without kindness.

This is a psalm that ends in tension. There’s no tidy resolution — just a cry hanging in the air.  Psalm 123 is a Pride psalm when read through queer eyes.  It is a journey:

  • from I to we,
  • from pain to protest,
  • from waiting to marching,
  • from scorn to song.


God of the misfit, the glittered and the scorned,
You see us when others look away.
You hear us when others speak over us.
You know what it is to be treated with contempt.

We lift our eyes to you —
not because it’s easy,
but because we’ve run out of places to look.

We ask for mercy.
Not pity, but justice.
Not tolerance, but truth.

We don’t look to the proud or the powerful —
we look to you.
And we look together.

While we wait, help us to stand.
While we speak, help us be heard.
While we celebrate, help us remember whose we are.

Amen.

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