Psalm 121
Reflection Written by Phil wadsworth
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot be moved, He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He Who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite you by day, not the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all evil; He will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore.
As someone who enjoys hill-walking I find lifting my eyes to the hills – happily possible from various places in Bramhall – always gives a boost, an uplift. Though it’s stretching it to suggest Isaiah 52:7 (‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good tidings’) is about hill-walking these are among passages in the Bible where mountains symbolise majesty, strength, and endurance.
From a place of refuge (‘flee to the hills’, Matthew 24:16) to a place of tranquillity, reflection, and nearness to God (‘Jesus went up a mountainside .. and sat down’, Matthew 15:29) – the latter a feeling know to many walking the hills – the Bible uses various images of hills and mountains when describing attributes of, and our relationship with, God.
‘Up’ is a word used in many ways for positivity, including ‘it’s looking up’, ‘speaking up’, ‘come up higher’, ‘feeling uplifted’, ‘upper hand’, and lots more. It can be an invitation to look to better things – ‘cheer up’, ‘buck up’. In Lent, though, we may be reflecting on Jesus going up to Jerusalem, with the presage of what’s to come, ‘up’ hardly seeming positive in that passage; and, indeed, most negative, Jesus lifted up on the Cross – but even here we’re carried onward to the greatest positive: Jesus rising (another ‘up’ word) from the tomb, and later His Ascension.
Psalm 121 evokes lifting our eyes to the hills as a symbol, an image of raising our thoughts and prayers to God.
God, incomprehensively moreso than the hills, is majesty, strength, and endurance; He is our place of refuge, and reflecting on Him brings tranquillity. The psalm comprehensively assures us that God is always there, the ultimate refuge and source of strength in all the circumstances in our lives – wherever, whenever, however bad (or good) things are, whatever we’ve done or not done, in a crowd or alone, and whether we do or don’t remember that He is there.
As we take the Lenten journey again and after, when it is over for another year, Psalm 121 inspires us with its account of God’s care for us and reminds us, in the words of Romans 8:38-39, ‘that neither death, nor life, not angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’.