Psalms 121

Last night, I was feeling pretty low and I did something I haven’t done in far too long. I got out a thick, old book, one I hadn’t cracked open in some time but that was still stained with tears and highlighter and notes in the margin. It’s been read most all the way through so many times that I can’t remember and yet it’s been many years since I’ve felt the familiar tissue paper lightness of it’s pages.

I flipped to the middle, losing myself for a while in the familiar cadence of lines and rhythms… words I’ve read so many times that I thought they’d lost their meaning… only they haven’t.

They couldn’t.

I lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.

Doesn’t it just sound like something you could tuck under your chin and use as a blanket to keep you warm for always? Don’t the words just roll off your tongue like the smooth richness of chocolate?

I lift up mine eyes to the hills.

And so that’s what I did last night, after losing myself in Psalms for the better part of an hour. I sat alone, forgoing my usual Wednesday night So You Think You Can Dance (don’t worry, I recorded) and just … lifted my eyes.

Because so much of the lowness and sadness and depression that seems to bounce off and around the world comes from the fact that it seems we’re all wandering with our eyes down. We don’t lift them to see the beauty, the glory, the wonder that is all around us.

When was the last time you lifted your eyes? When was the last time you really saw what was around you and realized that, for all it’s imperfections it’s life. This world we live in, this planet is so full of beauty and of life. It is heartrendingly beautiful, isn’t it? If you think about it. I mean, the fact of flowers alone is pretty miraculous. There are clouds that end up shaped exactly like a poodle. There are trees that grow so close together that their branches become entwined in an almost eternal embrace and that, my friends, is amazing. That is beautiful. It’s easy to get lost in the sadness around us; the hunger, the war, the violence. But there is so much beauty, too. And by focusing on the beauty, it is so much easier to work on what needs work.

That is the help that comes, when you lift up your eyes.

I often feel like I’m spinning my wheels, wondering what it is that I’m doing that carries any meaning at all. I often wonder, as I did yesterday, that I’m doing it all wrong somehow. But last night when I creased the pages closed and lifted my eyes, all I saw around me was good. My little mismatched house that had seemed so dirty only hours before now seemed to reflect a fullness of life… crumbs signaling there’s enough to eat… there’s too much to eat because every crumb doesn’t have to be savored. Dishes in the sink could be easily disposed of in that wonder of a machine called a dishwasher and there was hot running water to clean them and it wasn’t going away any time soon.

There are hungry people in my city. There are children who are starving. There are women who are being abused. There are men who can not pay their bills unless they resort to crime. And all of these things break my heart in a way I could never put into words. And sometimes it gets too much. Sometimes I get bogged down in the sadness and I feel as though there will never be enough of me to fix the broken in the world.

But when I lift up mine eyes, I see that the trees in my yard are tall and strong, the grass soft beneath my feet. I can travel only three hours east and find myself in the vast wonder that is the rolling tides of the Atlantic Ocean and if you want to understand the magnificence of this world and who created it, go there.

So very often I feel small and insignificant. So often I feel lost and confused and wander about wondering what I can do, what can I do, to make this Earth better. But last night it came to me in a rush of warmth and the sweetness of silence. I am not small and insignificant. I am not alone. And if I can just remember to keep my eyes open to the beauty that is around me, all will be right.

For when everything seems too much, I can lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.