Learning to Trust the God Who Keeps Us [Psalm 121]
Every night before my husband and I go to bed, we tiptoe into our kids’ rooms. We give them one last kiss, straighten out their blankets, and tuck the covers around them. And nearly every single night since the twins were babies, I’ve put my hand on their backs, leaned in close, and listened for the sound of their breathing.
The habit started out of fear. For months after we brought our tiny newborns home from the hospital, I’d check on them incessantly. I’d pick them up, smell their sweet skin, and watch their chest rise and fall as they inhaled and exhaled. I needed to hold them just one more time before collapsing into my own bed for a few hours. My husband reassured me regularly, “They’re okay. They’re going to be okay,” and I knew—most likely—he was right. At the time, I didn’t think I was being an anxious parent, but looking back, I can see how fearful I really was—and often still am.
“We do not have to live in fear, because we have a God who keeps us.”
My routine of checking on my kids is less out of fear now and more out of gratitude. I love seeing their sweet faces, whispering a prayer over them, and giving them one last kiss. (And aren’t kids so much sweeter when they’re sleeping?!) But so many nights, I still find myself afraid for them, anxious about the future, and wondering what’s going to happen in the next day, the next year, the next lifetime. What if they’re not going to be okay? What if something happens? What if _________?
The worry can be crippling, and from what I know from veteran parents, it doesn’t stop after infancy. It only gets worse as you wait for your teenager to drive home late at night or as you watch them struggle through deep heartache.
Maybe the worry isn’t with your kids but with your spouse, parent, or friend. Maybe you worry about your marriage disintegrating or the health of your parents or a strained friendship. The news headlines alone can leave us feeling paralyzed with worry. So many of us have questions about what work or school or our financial picture will look like even a month from now. The fear about tomorrow can so quickly rob us of today. So we grasp for control—double-checking everything, making lists, or trying to mentally prepare for the worst.
There’s nothing wrong with being cautious, careful, and prepared, but full control will always be out of our reach. And that’s a good thing, because it points us to the one who is.
It points us to the LORD who keeps us.
The LORD is Our Keeper
Psalm 121 is a beautiful poem that reminds us of what we somehow keep forgetting—that we do not have to live in fear, because we have a God who keeps us. This poem is part of the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120-134), a group of songs believed to have been sung by Jewish pilgrims as they traveled to worship in the temple in Jerusalem. It’s a passage that offers comfort because of who God is and what he’s done.
This psalm has come to mind often in the last year. In 2020, I think we could all probably use a dose of hope that these verses provide. Yet this passage is more than a quick bandage to help us feel better. It doesn’t offer surface-level comfort. No. Psalm 121 offers truth we can cling to even when the worries and realities of life threaten to undo us.
So as we jump into this passage, we’re going to look at three questions:
1. Who is this God who keeps us?
2. What does keep even mean?
3. And is it actually true that he keeps us from all evil?
Psalm 121 gives great comfort—and also a lot to wrestle through. But when we sit with these words, honestly and prayerfully seeking to know God better, we’ll be able to hold even more tightly to him as our keeper.
Who is This God?
Psalm 121:1-2 says, “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.” If we’re going to understand this passage, we have to look at who this God actually is and what he is like.
For the Jewish pilgrim, the hills could have meant a few different things, and commentators offer different interpretations here. The hills could have been a source of anxiety and fear, since robbers or bandits could be hiding there. The hills could also have been a metaphor for the divine realm, or a physical place where pagan religions were practiced. Jeremiah 3:23 points to this: “Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains. Truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel.”
In contrast to any danger looming or pagan religion practiced in the hills, we have help from the LORD.[1] The author of Psalm 121 goes on to describe Yahweh, the God who keeps us. For example, he’s the creator of heaven and earth. He won’t let our foot be moved. He doesn’t sleep. He’s our shade.
These verses offer a picture of a deity completely different from any other god in ancient Near East culture, a truth that’s repeated over and over again through the Old Testament. He is all-powerful. He is in control. He has full authority over all creation. The Exodus story demonstrates Yahweh’s power over the Egyptian gods who couldn’t save Egypt from the death of their firstborn children. God commands that his people have “no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). All through the book of Leviticus, the refrain, “I am the LORD your God,” rings as a clear reminder that Yahweh was God, not the gods of other nations.
“So often, we live with fear because we’re looking elsewhere for our help, and we don’t actually believe that God has it all under control.”
In Isaiah, God’s people live in exile in Babylon. Yahweh appeared powerless to them in the face of the Babylonian gods, but God says to his people through the prophet, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:26). He goes on to say, “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior” (Isaiah 43:10b-11). Yet Israel so often fell into the trap of looking elsewhere. They formed a golden calf, asked God to give them a king like the other nations, and worshipped false gods like Baal.[2] But those efforts were for naught.
So often, we live with fear because we’re looking elsewhere for our help, and we don’t actually believe that God has it all under control. In 1 Kings 18, Elijah called out the people for “limping between two different opinions.” He told them, “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21).
If we’re going to actually follow Yahweh, we have to believe that he is who he says he is. Otherwise we limp along like the Israelites, as Elijah points out, or we get tossed around in our doubt like a wave of the sea, as James talks about in his letter (James 1:6). How many of us are limping along in our journey because we’re looking to God as an afterthought? How many of us are wave-tossed and battered because we doubt his ability to do what he’s said? We go to him as a last resort or run ourselves ragged attempting to figure it out on our own. All the while, he’s waiting for us to run to him and trust that he will keep us.
Psalm 121 reminds us, “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” Our God watches over us at all times. He doesn’t grow tired or weary as we do. He’s not busy doing something else. Pagan religions sometimes believed their gods were sleeping, and Elijah taunted the worshippers of Baal in 1 Kings 18 says, “Maybe he’s asleep!” But we serve a God who is fully in control and fully attentive. He’s a God who keeps us and a God who invites us to turn to him for our help.
What Does Keep Mean?
In verses 3-8, some form of the word “keep” is used six times. In Hebrew, this word, somer, is sometimes translated as watch, guard, or preserve. For example, Psalm 25:20 says, “Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me! Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you” (italics added). In Genesis, God promises Jacob in a dream that, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15).
There's a sense of God’s watchfulness and his protection, a promise that no matter what happens, Yahweh stands guard over us in the present and in the future. From our human perspective, things may appear completely out of control, yet God is no less active and attentive. He’s no less powerful and in control. He keeps Israel (verse 4), and he will keep us forevermore (verse 8).
Sometimes I find it easier to grasp this idea when it comes to big things in my life. Maybe you can relate to being in a car accident or near-death experience, and you saw clearly how God preserved your life. My dad was a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, and he can tell story after story of God keeping him alive. You may have some of those stories, too, and we praise the LORD for them. But for many of us, we struggle to believe God also watches over us in the little, everyday minutiae.
Eugene Peterson writes, “We know that God created the universe and has accomplished our eternal salvation. But we can’t believe that he condescends to watch the soap opera of our daily trials and tribulations; so we purchase our own remedies for that. To ask him to deal with what troubles us each day is like asking a famous surgeon to put iodine on a scratch.”
In the ordinary, mundane moments when we struggle to get out of bed or we don’t know what to do or we face a decision or we deal with exhaustion that wears us down little-by-little, God is there, too, holding us, preserving us, and watching over us. Life may not be easy. We may suffer and struggle and grieve. But trusting God means believing who he is and building our life on that truth. It doesn’t mean building our picture of God based on what our life looks like. Life may be falling apart. He is still our keeper, our shade, protection, and guard. This side of eternity we just haven’t yet seen the full picture of how he’s keeping us.
In the meantime, we can lift our eyes to the hills and know our help—whether in huge problems or mundane moments—comes from the LORD.
From All Evil?
As we come to the end of this psalm, verses 7 and 8 say, “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 have to ask, “Does he really keep us from all evil?”
There are plenty of people in my own life and around the world who have not been kept from evil. The hand of evil touches everything. Where is God in that?
To be quite honest, I’m still wrestling with this question myself. The problem of evil can’t be answered in a paragraph or two, and what I say here will be insufficient. But if we’re going to believe the words of Psalm 121 and be able to honestly pray through it, we have to at least begin to wrestle with this problem.
The Jewish pilgrim singing this psalm would have been no stranger to the effects of evil. Traveling itself would have been a dangerous endeavor, and Israel had a history of falling into the hands of ruthless nations and often being the perpetrators of evil. Yet if we look at a bird’s eye view of Scripture, we see a story of what God is doing about it. He is bringing justice, he is saving, and he will one day make everything right again.
I do not know why he doesn’t do it faster. I don’t understand why he uses us faulty, frail, and finite people in the process. But God’s timing is not ours, his ways are not ours, and we are not the first people to wonder why evil and suffering can sometimes seem more real than he does.
We cannot understand all that God is doing in the world and why he works the way he does. But we can choose to trust that he is faithful and then choose to be faithful in our own life. While evil may cause us to suffer deeply, it will not have the final word. As N.T. Wright notes in Evil and the Justice of God, “The only thing to do is to hold the spectacular promises in one hand and the messy reality in the other and praise YHWH anyway.”
“God keeping us doesn’t mean that we will never suffer. It does mean, though, that evil and suffering, danger and heartache will not have the final word.”
Paul relays a similar idea in Romans 8, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, no 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.”
God keeping us doesn’t mean that we will never suffer. It does mean, though, that evil and suffering, danger and heartache will not have the final word. We only see a sliver of the story now. Someday, it will become clear, and we will “know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Learning to Trust the God Who Keeps Us
This psalm felt especially poignant to me after a conversation I had with my husband, Colson a couple of months ago. We stood in the kitchen cleaning up after the kids were in bed. It had been another hard day, nothing really out of the ordinary, but another day filled with anxiety and overwhelm. Colson and I had been talking with my counselor about taking medication for depression, something I’d been trying to avoid and only entertained as a last resort. But here we were, talking about the step I didn’t think I’d need to take.
“How do you feel about it?” he asked. I had a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, a lot of apprehension. My shoulders slumped, and I felt the tears starting to fall. “What if it doesn’t work?”
The fear of being unfixable felt overwhelming. What if I have to go through months or years of trying different dosages, medications, or worse yet—what if this struggle and depression is just who I am? What if nothing is wrong with my hormones or brain or serotonin levels?
“The promise of the psalm—and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way—is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us.”
“Medication is not your salvation,” he reminded me. “If it doesn’t work, we adjust, but we don’t look to medication to be the end-all solution. It’s possible it won’t work. But the goal is to glorify God no matter what.”
God does at times give us help in the form of resources like medication and counselors. Believe me, I’m grateful for those things. But as Colson reminded me, the ultimate goal is not to fix me, to remove hard circumstances, or even to find a way of escape. The goal is to glorify God in the middle of it all—whether healing comes or hurts remain. And we get to do that by knowing him and making him known through every situation in our lives—even, and probably especially—through the ones that aren’t “fixable.” And in Psalm 121, we see this spelled out clearly: we get to rest in and declare the reality that Yahweh is our help. He is our keeper; there is no one else.
Whether we’re fearing for our kids or other loved ones, struggling in everyday life, facing life or death situations, or battling evil in the world, the LORD is our keeper. I’ve started whispering that over my kids at night when I check on them. “The LORD is their keeper.” It’s not a magic spell that will protect them from any danger or harm. Rather, it’s a reminder of who God is and the promises we can hold onto. Eugene Peterson writes, “The promise of the psalm—and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way—is not that we shall never stub our toes but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us.”[3]
Even in doubt, confusion, wrestling, pain, grief, injustice, and weariness, we can choose to lift our eyes and look to God for help. We can choose to stop limping between different opinions and follow Yahweh whole-heartedly. We can trust that he watches over us, keeps us, and guards us. We can believe that God is doing something about evil, and that the death and resurrection of Jesus shows us that evil has already done the worst it can do—and it did not, and will not—win out in the end.
[1] “LORD” in all capital letters refers to God’s personal name, Yahweh.
[2] Exodus 32, 1 Samuel 8, Judges 2
[3] A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, page 42.
