Psalm 121:1,2 “I lift my eyes up to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s first ever sermon was on Psalm 121. It was so apt for a man who would become famous for staying faithful to Jesus through the toughest of circumstances and even to death. He was gripped by the reality of this Christ, who demanded his entire obedience, and who in turn gave him such a depth of meaning, purpose, and security that even death itself could not take away. He wrote: “Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience, resting in the hand of Almighty God.”
Psalm 121 is all about the choice we have when confronted with the mountains of our circumstances. Will we fix our eyes and attention on those obstacles – be they worries, problems, or even threats of physical danger – or will we fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and creator of our faith? I read once that ‘obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal’. So let’s keep our eyes on Jesus! He’s where our help comes from. With a daily sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that doesn’t depend on the ups and downs of our immediate circumstances we can make the choice to lift our eyes up, not to the hills of our problems, but to the hill of Calvary, and to our Saviour Jesus Christ, who died that we might live, and offers to take our worries and replace them with the peace that passes all understanding.
A word of caution: our immediate circumstances don’t always turn out well. They didn’t with Bonhoeffer. But then he knew the real, eternal, ending to his story. And I trust you do too.
Lord, I choose to hang in there today, to look beyond my problems to you, risen Christ. Amen!
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