A reflection on Psalm 12

The Mock Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind (As You Like It - Act IV Scene I) by Walter Howell Deverell 

Have we made all the world a stage?

Addicted to our own applause? 

Do we owe our Sunday Best to a child refugee?

Who gave us virtues to be seen - or not to be seen : what is the answer?

We cannot ask the faithful - they have been cast out.

Prayer

Lord, help us to break free from being type-cast according to our own scripts; to lose our obsession for affirmation. Help us to hear only your will and to act on it.

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.’ (Matthew 23.27-28)

Psalm 12

Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly;

   the faithful have disappeared from humankind.

They utter lies to each other;

   with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,

   the tongue that makes great boasts,

those who say, ‘With our tongues we will prevail;

   our lips are our own—who is our master?’

‘Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan,

   I will now rise up,’ says the Lord;

   ‘I will place them in the safety for which they long.’

The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure,

   silver refined in a furnace on the ground,

   purified seven times.

You, O Lord, will protect us;

   you will guard us from this generation for ever.

On every side the wicked prowl,

   as vileness is exalted among humankind.

Links       

The origin of the word hypocrite
All The World's A Stage
The Mock Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind (As You Like It - Act IV Scene I) by Walter Howell Deverell adapted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.