Hopefully reading the first ten verses of this Psalm will encourage you to read the next eighteen!
The writer gives us one verse of assurance, one of insecurity, and then eight of envy. But, if you read on, the writer is drawn close to God through a visit to the Temple and the Psalm ends, as it begins, declaring the blessing of God.
The sentiment the Psalmist describes is ever with people of faith. The challenge of living a faithful life, and the sacrifice that entails, when it seems that everyone is effortlessly better off whilst giving God no mind at all.
In our comparatively tolerant and prosperous society we can find ourselves nodding along to the Psalmist’s words – but how totally heartbreaking it must be for those who live out their faith in the face of persecution and harassment.
The challenges we face in the UK are apathy, incomprehension, and being indiscernible. Often we are hidden in the background of everyday life, and are only brought to mind as a historically quaint anecdote or in the face of major life events.
But we can hold on to the words of assurance we hear later in the Psalm where within the activity of religious life people can be drawn closer to God. It is in these possibilities that we can find our sure-footing.