The Lord our Keeper
Better than any other book, the Bible describes life for us as it really is: sometimes joyful, sometimes tragic, by turns mundane, frustrating, exciting, confusing, tiring, energising. Thankfully, better than any other book, the Bible offers hope that really strengthens and protection that really saves: the Lord of life and the keeper of his people.
Psalm 121 is a pilgrim poem for Christians on their way home to God. The hills are high, but the Lord made them. Our feet slip from fatigue, but the Lord is not like us: he needs no sleep, and so he watches us, he focuses on us, and he does so without distraction or blinking an eye. He watches over what he loves and protects what he treasures. In the sunniest and coldest moments, the Lord is our keeper. From going out to our wedding day to coming home to news of cancer, the Lord is our keeper. In the lofty and the mundane, the Lord keeps our lives.
All of this might sound quite over the top, but it’s not. The Lord does not promise to remove our trouble, but he does keep us in it. Christians are born again to a living hope, an inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:4-5). When Jesus climbed to Jerusalem, he climbed the hill of death for us, which we could not climb. He was struck by the sun and he took on the darkness; he died our death. When Jesus rose again he showed that he was not just the keeper of our lives but the giver of new life. If Christ is our keeper, he will keep our life and raise us to new life, and we will make it home just fine.