The One Who Doesn’t Sleep

I'm not the one who checks the locks in our house.

We never sat down and divided that up. It landed on Rachel somewhere along the way, and I've gone whole stretches without giving the back door a thought. She's the one who notices.

But there's a version of that I do carry, and so do you. There's an account you're the only one watching. A person you're the only one checking on. Something that would quietly come apart in about two weeks if you stopped paying attention to it. Nobody assigned it to you either. You just know that if you don't, nobody will. And underneath it runs a low hum that says if you stop watching, it falls.

Psalm 121 was written for people on a road.

It's one of the songs pilgrims sang walking up toward Jerusalem, and the hills in the opening line are not scenery. That's where the trouble was. Bandits, weather, a bad step on loose rock a long way from anyone who could help you. You looked up at that country and did the math on what could happen to you in it.

“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.” (Psalm 121:1-4, ESV)

That was a pointed claim in its day. The gods of everybody around Israel slept. It's why Elijah could stand on Mount Carmel and needle the prophets of Baal about it, tell them to shout a little louder, maybe he's asleep and somebody needs to wake him up. Every other god in the neighborhood kept hours. Israel's didn't.

Six times in eight verses the psalm uses one word. Keep. He keeps you. He keeps Israel. He is your keeper. He'll keep you from all evil. He'll keep your life. He'll keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forevermore.

It never once says the hills get smaller.

We want the promise to be that the hard thing gets lifted off the road. What we get is a keeper who doesn't clock out, on the same road, in the same weather, for the whole walk.

Which means the hum is lying to you. Not about the stakes. The stakes are usually real, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anybody. It's lying about who is holding it. You are not the last line of defense on your family, your church, your work, or your future. You aren't even the first one. You are walking a road that somebody has been watching the whole time. Including the stretches you don't remember walking, and the ones you were too tired to notice you'd made it through.

That psalm got sung on the way somewhere, not after arriving. People needed it while their feet still hurt.

The question isn't whether you can keep watching everything. You can't, and the trying is what's wearing you down. It's whether you can walk today believing somebody else already is.

He's been on it since before you got worried.