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Psalm 121 reads as follows from the New American Bible translation: I raise my eyes towards the mountains, From where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, The maker of heaven and earth, God will not allow your foot to slip, Your guardian does not sleep, Truly, the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps, The Lord is your guardian, The Lord is your shade, At your right hand, By day the sun cannot harm you, nor the moon by night, The Lord will guard you from all evil, Will always guard your life, The Lord will guard your coming and going, Both now and forever. You could almost see the psalmist here trekking through some high mountainous terrain, being totally subject to whatever the elements would bring and going to and fro in unknown and tricky trails without the help of familiarity. While the whole of this psalm is talking about the extended guardianship of the Lord, the recognition of this, the realization of this, really seizes to a moment. The psalmist is looking over a vast terrain of mountainous territory. If you have ever been in a National Park on some of the high mountain trails, you can begin to think like this. My experience has been in Glacier National Park in Montana, where you can look across a mountainous terrain and realize, there is probably no one out there in that thickness of trees densely forested stretching over vast distances from the view your taking in and then you might ponder in this moment, who am I and where I am it all this and who or what could possibly be out there that can relate to my place here where I am standing. The same could be said for say someone in the distant seas, on some sort of boat and looking at the awesome expanse of the seas, maybe into rolling and sweeping waves as far as you can see, and then they might realize they are situated somewhere, but that anchoring point is relatively unknown and this realization can be rather frightful in some ways, the stark reality of being dwarfed by the sights you are seeing, yet not seeing really anyone looking back at you and realizing that you are standing alone against the distance. Looking at the sky alone can be like this, yet a awesomely arrayed sunset seems to call back. In this psalm verse 1 and verse 5 seem to reverberate together. The point of recognition is when the psalmist lifts his eyes, lifting his eyes not knowing what he is going to see, and if any wanted and needed help will be anywhere in his sight in the utter expanse of what is before him. There is an initial sense of being lost. You could picture this moment, and follow his or her eyes, turning, lifting, not in the motion of panic but in the motion of recognition. Sometimes you see this in movies, the star is alone say at a beachfront and she turns her eyes and recognizes that special someone and is delightfully surprised yet maintains her personal resolution in that moment. It is not coming from unawarness to awareness as she knew it was possible and she is capable of recognizing that whom presence has suddenly arrived. This is a true turn of recognition into the beauty of recognition. The situation was and is rather frightful for the psalmist, looking into a terrain of endless mountains as far as he could see and not knowing what the beginning and end to all this could be, but there is and was a core ability and capability to make the turn and see to the truth of the Lord's presence. This psalm is showing the Lord’s presence in this moment, and shows that this presence doesn’t disappear for the psalmist but lingers and emanates forward into a 24-7 guardianship of his coming and going. The recognition of the moment goes forward and onward and gathers to the form of relationship. Verse 5 reverberates to verse 1 where it says, “The Lord is your guardian, the Lord is your shade, at your right hand. “ This moment of recognition found in the lifting or turning of the eyes, resulted in a closeness but also resulting from a closeness where the psalmist has this place in his soul lifted to the Lord as well as his eyes, to where the Lord was right there to see the very eyes of the psalmist and into his soul, eyes otherwise dwarfed a million plus times over by the utter expanse of what is out there, and yet the Lord is literally over the shoulder and at the right hand of this psalmnist, shading forth in this moment of personal recognition and remaining on the guard for this person. This psalm resonates as a person to person exchange, and the images found here could have similarities to say someone looking for a friend and suddenly and happily sighting them coming towards from afar. The eyes were lifted up looking yonder and did find. But you can really picture that this psalmist had strength and an inner resolve and worthiness found within, and even in the separation, lifts his eyes not quite knowing but now hoping and then finding the personal presence of the Lord, beaming back right to the sight of his eyes. This psalm really speaks to how close the Lord can be to the seeker of his help and how in the vastness of the surrounds this relationship is both found and not usurped by the otherwise overwhelming nature of what is and can be out there, and also how in this case he met the lifting or turn of the psalmist eyes right then and right there and this momentary presence remained for the psalmist continuing on into a close guardianship from the Lord over vast stretches of both time and place and this is something to meditate on in the manner of prayer in the here and now. Another aspect of this is just how much this shade of the Lord presence described here as he was present to this psalmist individually covers all of the psalmist life, described here as involving all of his coming and going. This safe cover did extend to all of the psalmist comings and goings according to the verses of this psalm and this was also a felt presence in that all of what is described here involves the sense of feeling such as shade would involve. Shade is something that you feel and its absence is also something that you feel. A parallel to this psalm could be the story of Jonah, where the Lord does provide very close and specific shade for Jonah as he awaits the Lord’s final verdict on the city from outside its boundaries, yet the Lord withdraws this help as part of his individual message to him concerning what he now intends to do. These passages in Jonah show how the Lord's help can closely relate also to the importance of lining up with the Lord in the manner of intercessions for others, in this case it was a vast city of the time, that was prosperous and took three days to cross by foot, but this city was now in the Lord’s eye for possible judgment and the agency of Jonah was part of the Lord’s plan to give room for repentance. The discussions between the Lord and Jonah went to the smallness of a plant providing shade for Jonah to the largesse of the still undetermined fate of a giant city. An interesting aspect of this story as well is that the news of the call to repentance started and rapidly went first through the land from the grass roots of the giant city and reached the king a little later. The relationship of prayer described in the psalm is very individualistic to the one on one relationship in prayer to the Lord, but can carry into large intercessions. Here Jonah is waiting outside the city, waiting and not knowing what would happen at this large moment for others which came into his own individual personal relationship with the Lord in the very moment at hand.
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