A Song of Ascent
Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and forevermore.
This is a familiar Psalm, one of several (Psalms 120-134) titled “Songs of Ascents,” and this one is said to give us “Assurance of God’s Protection.” One easily can imagine various greeting cards engraved with passages from it that are aimed at encouraging a recipient who has been facing hard times. For example, a beautiful mountain scene with the first two verses would feature a bright white light, representing God, radiating from behind these peaks and reminding us of Genesis 1:1’s teaching that the Lord made our Earth and its heavens. Or consider Verse 3, with a photo of a hiker on a steep cliffside and some loose dirt tumbling off the edge, but the hiker has reached the top of the mountain safely and is looking out over the gorgeous view. One commentary concerning this Psalm noted that many people see it as a blessing bestowed on travelers and always read it before starting a journey. This is easy to see from the reference to God as your “keeper,” or protector, whether you are going out or coming back home, as Verse 8 says.
In our modern era, the word shade often has a negative connotation. The phrase to “throw shade” on someone is to disrespect or insult that person, and a shady character is NOT an upstanding citizen. In this Psalm, the shade in Verse 5 is a reference to a good shade – the shade of a mother bird’s wing, protecting the chicks below her in the nest. And one important piece of information found here is that God doesn’t “slumber or sleep.” He won’t dose off and is always on the job, watching over you and trying to keep you on the right path, not just now and then, but “forevermore.” How much more assurance of protection could anyone need?
The reference to God’s control of the sun and moon, to prevent them from striking you, would appear to have greater relevance in Earth’s early history, where various civilizations viewed both these astronomical objects as gods up in the sky, having the power to hurt or help you, depending on whether you worshipped them adequately.
But, indeed, we know that God is the one true God and all others are human creations, not to be worshipped. The Israelites heard that lesson repeatedly. Today, however, we know through the study of science that stars like our sun, as they die, can expand into red giants and envelop nearby planets, and our Earth is in that very zone. The moon would appear to be less threatening, although the science-fiction movie Moonfall suggested that it could crash into the Earth if something disrupted its orbit. So the message of Verse 6 should be a comfort to us, no matter what the future holds for planet Earth, because we are God’s people, and he will find the means to protect us, no matter what. That’s the all-important, encouraging words that are Psalm 121’s lesson to us.
Dear Lord, thank you for your perpetual care of and concern for us, your people, wherever we go and whatever we do. And thank you for our home planet, Earth, which has beautiful landscapes that remind us of your glory. Amen.
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