Due to the holiday weekend (and my trip), I am posting this week’s meditation a day late (posted on 9/5 and backdated to 9/4). The following comes from our church’s weekly email in which we predistribute the order of worship. This gives our congregants the opportunity to review, reflect and prepare for Sunday worship. While the focus is short term, the pattern is part of longer on-going life of discipleship.

The meditation this week that is a provision of God’s grace to “tune our hearts to sing God’s praises” as we respond to his call to come and worship, comes from Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does 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. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on 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 forth and forevermore.

We often turn to this Psalm when we begin to feel extra-ordinarily pressed and sense that we are coming close to breaking; this is no doubt the sort of circumstances that the Psalmist found himself in – once again pursued by his enemies. But as we are reminded in Scripture “our Adversary, our Accuser the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” we sense him prowling about throughout our days, in the midst of our work and our relationships – and there are days that we wonder, is there any place we can turn our eyes for help? Is there any one who will keep and guard us against the threats of those who pursue us? The Psalmist reminds us that our help does not come from the high places of our culture (Wall Street, psycho-therapies, drugs (legal or otherwise), or Washington) but from the living Lord himself, who made the heavens and the earth.