I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. Psalm 121
When I read this Psalm, the items mentioned in the title are the images that come to mind. So often, life feels precarious. Circumstances we didn’t ask for or didn’t see coming can, in effect, pull the carpet right out from under us, and reveal not a solid floor to stand on, but thin air. How do we ever find solid footing in places that offer no stability, but are instead full of turbulence, shifting sands, or mere vapors of broken promises and disappointed expectations?
Life has a way of leading us to believe that we are going crazy. We’ve all seen the pictures of the insane person attempting to walk the tightrope over the roaring and surging Niagara Falls. “I would never do a foolish thing like that. Too risky,” we say to ourselves. And then, overnight, the world can change, and we are left looking out across a vast expanse of nothing. “How do I survive now?” we wonder.
Psalm 121 tells us to look to the mountain. We must lift up our eyes and place them on the unmovable mountain that is higher than us. Our help will come from there. The mountain is the Lord. He is the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip. In those places and at those times when nothing but a flimsy little thread stretches out before us as the only path anywhere to follow, the Lord not only makes each step secure, he builds the road for us to walk on. One small section at a time. Just wide enough to support our next step.
The Psalm goes on to say that he who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
Israel was God’s chosen. The man Jacob, renamed to Israel, and the entire nation that grew from his family line, enjoyed God’s favor. They act as a picture to us as the value God places on his children. They are his treasure, his safe full of money, his vault full of jewels. This sort of wealth isn’t treated casually. Rather, it is guarded day and night. While everyone else is sleeping, God is awake, attentive and alert to any potential danger. He is on the job all the time, better than the most experienced security guard stationed at the door of the wealthiest business in the biggest city.
Because God guards our lives so vigilantly, we can rest in him completely. Psalm 131 uses the image of a weaned child, a baby, with its mother. Verse 2 says, “I have calmed and quieted myself. I am like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child, I am content.”
The Lord keeps you from all harm.
He watches over your life.
He watches over you now, in the present, throughout the rest of your life into the future, and even after you die into eternity.
Nothing can snatch you away from his care, and even the most dangerous and precarious situations work for your good.
