Psalm 121:3, "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber,"
I remember seeing a photo once of an old stone wall in the English countryside, where the stones weren't held together by mortar, but by the careful, interlocking placement of the rocks themselves. If one stone shifted, the whole section could crumble. It made me think about how we spend so much of our lives trying to be the mortar; we try to hold everything together by our own strength, our own willpower, and our own frantic effort to keep our lives from falling apart.
But the Bible speaks of a different kind of security. In Psalm 121, we find a word that changes the way we look at our struggles. The Hebrew word is shamar. In our English Bibles, it is translated as "keep," but in the original language, it carries a much more rugged, active meaning. To shamar is to hedge about with thorns. It is the image of a shepherd building a protective barrier around his sheep to keep the predators out and the flock safe.
When the psalmist writes in Psalm 121:3, "He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber," he is using shamar. He is telling us that we aren't just being watched from a distance; we are being guarded.
The beauty of this word is that it covers every area of our existence. In Genesis, Adam was told to "keep" the garden, which was a call to stewardship. In Proverbs, we are told to "keep thy heart with all diligence," which is a call to personal vigilance. And at the end of his life, Paul could say, "I have kept the faith."
But here is the grace that settles the soul: before we are ever asked to keep anything, we are first kept by Him.
We often treat our faith like a tightrope walk, terrified that one wrong move or one moment of weakness will cause us to plummet. We think the burden of "keeping" our salvation rests on our shoulders. But shamar reminds us that God is the Keeper. He is the hedge of thorns. He is the vigilant guardian who does not sleep.
Our security isn't found in how tightly we grip the hand of God, but in how tightly He grips us. If your foot feels like it is slipping today, or if the terrain of your life feels treacherous, remember that you are not the one holding the wall together. You are the one being guarded by the Maker of heaven and earth.
Rest tonight knowing that the Keeper of Israel is on duty. You can sleep because He doesn't.
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