PSALM 121 - A Song of Ascents.
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, nor 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 forevermore.
Who doesn't need help?
When we are infants we are utterly dependent. As we get older, we learn
to accomplish personal tasks, and frequently insist on accomplishing them
unassisted. Our eagerness to be independent asserts itself early on, and only
grows through adolescence into adulthood. Yet the time comes when we realize a
need for others - to instruct us, to guide us, to coach us, to befriend us.
"No man is an island," totally self- sufficient. Yet very often we
still resist an honest admission of need - until we experience a crisis occurs
that brings us low, and opens our understanding to our true condition.
When such an event occurs, where we turn for help makes all the
difference. There are many who prey upon people in need, and seek to profit
from their condition. They offer comfort and security, but their ability to
deliver is always less than complete. When eventually we become disillusioned
with empty promises, it is easy to give up on the one thing that keeps us
going: hope.
Hopelessness is a deep, dark place, and robs the human spirit of
motivation and purpose. It is the greatest of all miseries, and is the very
essence of Hell itself. When we are in despair over irretrievable losses,
whether they be of relationships, financial means, physical health, lost youth,
personal freedom, or a loss of direction, of a sense of meaning and ultimate
purpose in life, we can slide into hopelessness. And it is at the point of
deepest, darkest hopelessness that we actually get a taste of what it must mean
to be in a place where God is eternally absent. This is the fearful condition
of those in Hell. No purpose. No fellowship. No joy. No hope.
Yet it is at this most precarious moment that we can discover God
Himself.
As we reach out in desperation to the God we previously held at arms
distance; as we turn in humility and submission to the Author of the life we
call our "own," we find that He is the One who not only restores
clarity concerning the real meaning and purpose of our lives, but showers us
with love and forgiveness through His Son. It is in admitting our need of His
ultimate assistance that we uncover our true design - that we are in fact
created beings, designed to live dependently upon Him.
And in discovering - or rediscovering - His loving faithfulness, we
again find hope. And we can find ourselves boasting not in our own strategies,
but in Him. We find we can affirm with the Psalmist: "Where does my help
come from? My help comes from the One who made those mountains, the One who
made me, and the One who made my eternal home. He is strong, He is faithful -
and He has my back!"
