Lift Up Your Eyes

We’ve all been there. Perhaps we’re there right now, amid a graduation, a wedding, a birth, a death, a health crisis, a job loss, a move or other season of change. We find ourselves standing together with God between the asking and the answering, between the discerning and the revealing, between the hope and the fulfillment.

No matter what, this is the perfect moment to pray Psalm 121. Verse 8 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.”

The psalmist lifts their eyes to the hills, where we should pause for a moment before we rush to the comfort that follows. In the ancient world, lifting your eyes to the hills was not simply a physical movement.

In Times of Uncertainty

The hills were where the shrines were located. The hills were where, in moments of fear and uncertainty, people looked for help from every source imaginable.

The psalmist is doing something honest before doing something faithful: acknowledging the very human instinct to look anywhere for reassurance when the ground beneath us feels uncertain.

Today, for many of you, the ground may feel uncertain.

But here is the irony that runs just beneath the surface of this psalm like a hidden spring: the answer, when it finally came, also came from a hill. A hill outside a city wall. From a cross planted in stony ground.

The Lord who made heaven and earth did not send his help from a safe distance. He came in the flesh, and he climbed, and he was lifted up.

So when we lift our eyes now, we are not scanning the horizon for just any comfort that will do. We are fixing our gaze on the only place where the full cost of our keeping was paid.

The cross is where we learn what it means that God watches over us, not with detached benevolence, but with a love that refused to look away even when looking meant dying.

That is the help that comes from the Lord.

That is the grace into which we have been baptized and which holds us here today.

In Times of Challenge

To those of you who are walking through a challenging time: Know you are not alone. That is the enemy’s lie, but the Lord, who is truth, has promised to be with you always. And if you are part of a community of faith, you also have brothers and sisters who are standing beside you – even as they carry their own pain and hurts.

To those of you who are celebrating a victory, I offer the same encouragement: Know you are not alone. Your heavenly Father is celebrating with you, and the communion of saints will do the same as you open yourself before them.

To those of you who are discerning next steps, I offer that same word: Know you are not alone. Along with the biblical promises that the Lord directs our path comes the encouragement that he will never leave us or forsake us – even when we don’t know what the next week, month or moment will hold.

All of us have been reassured by the psalmist’s declaration, “He who keeps you will not slumber” (v. 3).

Forevermore

The psalm moves, beautifully, from the question to the answer. From anxious scanning of the horizon to a fierce certainty. God, your keeper, does not sleep.

Your keeper does not look away. Your keeper is not fatigued by the length of this day, not confused by its complexity, not uncertain about what was seen, what was heard or what happened today.

In the original Hebrew, there is a word that repeats itself through this psalm, shamar, which means “to keep, to watch, to guard.” It appears six times in the eight verses of Psalm 121.

The biblical poets were not subtle about things that mattered. The author wants the reader to know with great assurance that God watches over them, watches over you, as you come and go. That is, God is with you in every change and transition, especially during those in-between moments of life.

Precisely here. Precisely now.

For those in between one step or stage and another: You do not need to manage this waiting. The outcome is not yours to control. Take comfort that your Father who has called you this far will not abandon you to the verdict of any human process. Any step you take is nothing more than a movement to another door, and doors open into rooms where God wants you to go at this moment. Trust the keeper of your soul to meet you in whatever room is next.

And in the waiting, in the mourning, in the celebrating, remember: The grace that holds you was secured not by your prowess, your performance or your perfection, but by the one who was lifted up on that hill so that you might be free.

“The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forevermore” (v. 8).

Forevermore is a long time.

Long enough to cover today, tomorrow and all the days yet to come.

We lift up our eyes.

Not to the hills in their ancient ambiguity.

Not to the outcome we seek or fear.

Not to each other.

We lift our eyes to the cross, to the one who rose from the grave and who keeps our going out and our coming in, even now, even here, forevermore.

Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Rob Strenth is rector of St. Matthew’s, Orlando, and serves as chaplain for the Order of the Daughters of the King® for the Diocese of Central Florida. He is also a member of the Standing Committee and the Commission on Ministry. This article was adapted from his homily for the Bishop’s Advisory Committee for Aspirants to Ministry meeting on Tuesday, April 14, 2026.