Lift Your Eyes

Does anyone ever have a week that kicks you while you’re down? Does anyone ever have days that seem absolutely insurmountable? I have had a lot of that this week. Oh, how quickly my soul forgets God’s love, power and faithfulness.


““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.”
‭‭(Psalm‬ ‭121:1-2‬ ‭ESV‬‬). I love this verse. Have you ever walked through a valley so low and so dark and asked yourself, “Where does my help come from?” “What could possibly help me out of this?” The valleys have a funny way of making us forget the peaks. The darkness has a funny way of making us forget the light.


When I was a child, my parents took me to Hannibal, Missouri to the Mark Twain caves. During the tour, the guide had us stop and said, “Throughout this tour, we have had modern lighting so you could see, but this is what the caves looked like naturally, during Mark Twain’s time when the Tom Sawyer books were written.” And the lights went down. The darkness was unlike any darkness I have ever been in. It felt tangible. It felt empty. There was nothing. It was hollow and grave and unsettling. When they turned the lights back on, it was as if I was seeing for the first time. It took a while for my eyes to adjust. I remember thinking how this must have been the type of darkness Genesis 1 describes, so empty, the nothingness that we cannot begin to fathom.


Psalm 121:1-2 goes on to say, as we often have to do, “My help comes from the Lord.” The reminder our soul needs. Then, it goes on to describe the Lord as “the Maker of heaven and earth.” A reminder in those dark valleys that God is all-powerful and MORE-powerful than anything we could ever face. I love this description of Him here not only because it reminds us that he is powerful and able to deliver us in His own perfect timing and ways, but the reference to creation written in the darkest of valleys, how beautiful! God spoke light into the darkness at the beginning of time and He can speak light into the darkness of your valley - that overwhelming, tangible darkness - and fill it with His glorious light.