The Keeper

In what direction do we look for help when it’s needed most?

“What do you do?” It’s a common question people ask when meeting someone for the first time.

Everyone knows the expected answer has to do with employment. It means, “What do you do for a living?” Or, if you are retired, “What did you do?” For some, the answer to that question is deeply rooted in their fundamental identities as human beings. For others, it’s just a job.

The range of possible answers to “What do you do?” is a little different for each generation. The world of work is constantly changing, and there are answers today that would have made no sense to our ancestors: “I’m a podcaster … a computer coder … an Uber driver … a social media influencer.”

Similarly, there are jobs our ancestors would have known well that no longer exist today: “I’m an elevator operator … a milkman … a typesetter … a pinsetter in a bowling alley.”

When it comes to jobs, technology giveth and technology taketh away. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

In December 2023, one of those historic jobs went away for good. That was when the last lighthouse keeper in America retired. Her name was Sally Snowman. She was a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary who lived and worked at Boston Light for 20 years.¹

That historic lighthouse rises from Little Brewster Island, a craggy pile of rocks overlooking Boston’s Outer Harbor. It is everything you imagine a lighthouse should be: a white-painted circular tower, a spiral staircase to the top, a little glass-enclosed room where the massive lamp is mounted 89 feet above the ground.

The lamp at the top of Boston Light has been automated since 1975, but until she retired, Sally continued to live on the island, overseeing its maintenance and leading tours for visitors. Since her retirement, Boston Light has been, for the first time in its history — as the Coast Guard puts it — “unmanned.”

Today’s fully automated lighthouses are extremely reliable, but there’s still something romantic about the idea of a dedicated human lighthouse keeper, stoically keeping watch over that lifesaving machinery.

 

The Lord Is My Keeper

“I lift up my eyes to the hills.” So writes the anonymous author of Psalm 121, voicing the same question that is on so many minds in today’s anxious times: “From where will my help come?”

Some of us learned that verse in a slightly different version from the venerable King James Bible: “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.” In that version, the first verse ends not with a question, but with a statement of fact. The mountains themselves are reliable symbols of the Lord’s dependable help.

Many of us remember the movie, The Sound of Music. In one scene, the von Trapp family is fleeing from the Nazis, hoping to make it across the border from Austria into Switzerland, to freedom. There seems to be no way across the closely guarded border. But then the Mother Superior of the abbey where they’re hiding exclaims, “I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help!” Captain von Trapp has often taken his children on vigorous hikes through the mountains. Now, the family will take just one more hike, not around the huge mountain in their way, but over it. It’s the mountain itself that saves the von Trapp family, giving them their freedom.

It makes for a wonderful Hollywood screenplay, but unfortunately, it’s not true to the original Hebrew of the psalm. Looking up at the looming hills, the psalmist has other thoughts on his mind besides comfort and assurance.

The inscription above this psalm reads, “A song of ascents.” It’s not a part of the original psalm but rather an inscription that identifies this song as part of an ancient collection, one that was sung by pilgrims on their way to the holy city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, like many ancient cities, was built on a hill called Mount Zion by the pilgrims. When you traveled there on pilgrimage, you were “going up” to Jerusalem. That going up — that ascent — refers as much to the upward journey of the human spirit as it does to the geography.

Yet the pilgrim journey, joyful as it is in its overall goal, is not without its worries. Travel in those ancient days is slow, typically on foot. The roads wend their way through miles of wilderness, uninhabited except for wild beasts and fearsome bandits. If you slip on a rocky trail and fall, breaking a bone, there’s no doctor nearby to set it. If you drink from a water hole that turns out to be polluted, you could spend that night shivering with feverish chills, and you might not wake up at all the next morning. As the sun goes down, the psalmist looks up at the massive, hulking silhouettes of distant mountains and wonders what manner of evil may creep down from them in the night to assail him. “From where will my help come?” indeed.

The answer is instantaneous — provided by a second voice, one that is much more self-assured: “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.”

The Lord is your keeper. “Keeper” is not a name for God most of us are inclined to use, but for this wandering pilgrim, it bespeaks comfort and trust. The word “keeper,” to our minds, may at first recall a zookeeper, one who confines animals behind high fences and bars of steel. Not much comfort comes from imagining ourselves as caged animals!

Maybe the sort of keeper we ought to bear in mind as we read this psalm is a person like Sally Snowman of Boston Light. It is a lighthouse keeper — one who makes certain this important aid to navigation is maintained so it can fulfill its purpose. The Lord is very much our keeper in that sense. The Lord keeps us safe.

 

Security … Social, and Otherwise

For a great many Americans, one thing that keeps us — or that will eventually keep those of us who haven’t yet made it to retirement — is a government program called Social Security. For more than half a century, Americans have come to count on Social Security to be there when they retire.

On January 31, 1940, a woman named Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, was the very first person to receive a Social Security check. The amount? $22.54. A legal secretary, Fuller had worked for just three years under the Social Security program before retiring. She had paid a total of $24.75 in Social Security taxes. As it happened, she got back nearly that entire amount in the first check she received.²

Miss Fuller wasn’t sure, at first, whether this newfangled government benefit was even worth applying for. While running errands one day, she dropped by the Social Security office in Rutland, Vermont, to ask what, if anything, she was entitled to receive. She would later observe: “It wasn’t that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I’d been paying for something called Social Security, and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it.”

Dropping by the Social Security office that day proved to be one of the smartest moves of Miss Fuller’s life. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at the age of 65. She lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975. During her lifetime, she collected $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits — more than 1,000 times the amount she had paid into the system.

Ida May Fuller’s story was common enough among her generation. That’s exactly the way the Social Security system was designed. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his advisers intended that the first Social Security recipients would get a more-or-less free ride. That ride would be paid for by taxes contributed by younger workers. When those workers retired, in turn, their benefits would be paid for by even younger workers. As long as Congress continued to tweak the program guidelines, adjusting for demographic realities, the system would perpetuate itself indefinitely.

Roosevelt sold the concept of Social Security to the American public as “insurance,” although in fact it was — and continues to be — a tax. Many retirees, seeing that amount show up monthly in their bank accounts, continue to think the government is simply returning funds to them they’ve been holding on deposit. But if they live long enough, they will reach the point Ida May Fuller did just two months after her retirement — they will benefit from the largesse of others. It’s a notably important example of the larger community coming together, fulfilling the terms of a social contract to support one another.

Remember the question the guilty murderer Cain asked when the Lord inquired where his brother was: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). We are meant to be our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers. Government programs like Social Security are just one way that high ideal is lived out.

 

Spiritual Security

Writing long before there was any such thing as Social Security, the psalmist is speaking of another form of security.

Security is one of the great values — and anxieties — of our age. We have a Department of Homeland Security, pledged to keep us safe from terrorist attack. We have Social Security, pledged to provide an economic basis for our retirement. Psalm 121 is about spiritual security, which comes only from “the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Theologically speaking, it is all about God’s providence.

We’ve all heard the saying, “The Lord will provide.” Providence is that certainty that God will be there and will indeed provide.

The Heidelberg Catechism, one of the great Reformation-era confessions of faith, defines providence in this way (question 27):

The almighty, everywhere-present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth with all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand. ³

The Catechism then asks what advantage comes from acknowledging God’s creation and providence (question 28):

That we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and for what is future have good confidence in our faithful God and Father, that no creature shall separate us from His love, since all creatures are so in His hand, that without His will they cannot so much as move.⁴

The opposite of providence is chance. There is little comfort in the countervailing secular view that our lives are aimlessly adrift in a vast and turbulent sea of chance. Like the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, the psalmist’s view of the world is very different. God cares about each one of us as individuals, watching over us, protecting us. God may not always give us what we want, but God will get us through. “From where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

 

The Good Shepherd

Ron Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest who writes about spirituality, illustrates what God’s providence is all about. It is the story of a woman who found herself sitting in the back of a church with a cast on her lower leg. She had been visiting her sister, who lived near a major ski resort. On Sunday, her sister invited her to church. The woman went skiing instead.

You can figure out what happened. She broke her leg on the slopes. So, when her sister invited her to church once again, she agreed. She had nowhere else to go, really. She certainly couldn’t have gone back to the ski slope!

As it happened, the designated readings for the day were about Jesus, the Good Shepherd. It also happened that the regular priest was away, and the homily was delivered by a visiting priest from Israel.

The priest could not possibly have seen this woman, nor have known she was sitting there in the back pew with a cast on her leg. He began his homily by telling of an ancient practice among shepherds in Israel, one he said is still in use today — a practice that sheds light on the meaning of the phrase, “Good Shepherd.”

Sometimes, early in the life of a lamb, a shepherd may sense that the animal is going to be a congenital stray, that it will always be drifting away from the flock, where it could be injured or die. In such cases, the shepherd deliberately breaks the leg of the lamb, so he has to carry it himself until its leg is healed. By the time the healing is complete, the lamb has become so attached to the shepherd that it never strays again.

“I may be dense,” the woman said to herself after hearing the sermon, “but given my broken leg and all these coincidences, hearing those words woke something up inside me. I have prayed and gone to church regularly ever since!”

“In the conspiracy of accidents that make up the ordinary events of our everyday lives,” writes Rolheiser, “the finger of God is writing and writing large. We are children of Israel, children of Jesus, and children of our mothers and fathers in the faith. We need therefore, like them, to look at each and every event in our lives and ask ourselves the question: ‘What is God saying to us in this?’ The language of God is the experience that God writes inside our lives.”⁵

And so, let us be attentive to that language in our own lives. As we lift up our eyes to the hills, in what direction will we look for help? Will we look to the money we’ve invested — either by the government on our behalf, or on our own savings? Will we look to our physical health? To family and friends? To our own native talents and abilities? As significant as all these are, each one will fail, one day, to provide us with ultimate security.

Or will we look in a different direction — outside ourselves and all that is familiar and comforting? Will we look instead to the Lord, who is our keeper — the One who neither slumbers nor sleeps?

—Carl Wilton contributed to this material.

 

Sources

1. Dorothy Wickenden, “The Last Lighthouse Keeper in America,” The New Yorker, October 30, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/06/the-last-lighthouse-keeper-in-america. Retrieved September 24, 2025.

2. Larry DeWitt, “The Development of Social Security in America,” https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n3/v70n3p1.html. Retrieved September 24, 2025.

3. The Heidelberg Catechism, Question 27, from the webpage of the Reformed Church in America. https://rcus.org/heidelberg-catechism/. Retrieved September 24, 2025.

4. The Heidelberg Catechism, Question 28, from the webpage of the Reformed Church in America. https://rcus.org/heidelberg-catechism/. Retrieved September 24, 2025.

5. Ron Rolheiser, “Providence and the Conspiracy of Accidents,” RonRolheiser.com. https://ronrolheiser.com/providence-and-the-conspiracy-of-accidents/. Retrieved September 24, 2025.

The Other Texts

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Identity Acquisition. It’s hard to read the news without seeing an article about identity theft. Hackers are ingenious when finding new ways to figure out who you are and what your password might be. What looks like an innocent social media quiz can reveal important details like your pet’s name, hometown or model of the car you learned to drive in. With a little persistence and a simple computer program, a hacker can use these bits of information to run millions of permutations and iterations to guess your password. Identity theft is a good hook for the preacher, but in this gospel reading, the concern is not about identity theft, but identity acquisition. We don’t need to steal an identity to become a child of God. Such an identity is readily and freely available.

What Does the Text Say?

In this text, Jesus responds to Nicodemus’ greeting by immediately cutting to the heart of the issue that concerns Nicodemus: the coming kingdom of God. Verse 3 has a unique requirement for entrance into the kingdom. One must be born again. In Greek, this term means both “from above” and “again, anew.” While most translations choose one of these meanings and then relegate the second meaning to a footnote, it is more theologically correct to maintain this double meaning. Just as the kingdom is often referred to as both now and yet-to-come, entering this kingdom requires one to be born anew (into a new life and a new identity) and to be born “from above” (that is, from the heavenly place the kingdom generates from). Both the “kingdom of God” and being born anew have spatial, as well as temporal, components. Jesus’ tone becomes perceptively crisper. By verse 7, he is warning Nicodemus, “Do not be astonished …” and cautioning his nighttime visitor that he cannot restrict the approaching pneuma/Spirit. Nicodemus’ pitiful comeback (“How can these things be?”) now changes the focus of Jesus’ message. Jesus grows resigned to the ignorance and stubborn refusal of his listener and uses Nicodemus as one example of the kind of attitude that will ultimately lead to the cross by using a familiar biblical image — Moses lifting the bronze serpent on a pole in the desert — to describe what will be the work of the cross.

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Go Big or Go Home! The title is a well-known expression that means “to be extravagant, to go all the way and do whatever you are doing to its fullest — and not flake out” (www.urbandictionary.com). This is precisely what Abram decides to do after listening to God’s proposal. “Okay, I’m going big. Don’t know where I’m going, but it’s going to be big, spectacular!” There is absolutely no ambiguity about what inspires Abram’s move. Verse 1 does not try to sugarcoat or soft-pedal the things Abram is asked to give up. In fact, the text itemizes them. God commands Abram to leave his country, kindred and father’s house — everything that gives Abram his personal identity. In this tight-knit, family-oriented culture, leaving meant more than discarding personal or sentimental attachments. Abandoning the clan meant leaving one’s only source of law, morality, safety, security and identity. For Abram to leave the enclave of his family was to put his future survival — both psychological and personal — very much at risk. Abram is asked to give up his entire past, and in Genesis 22 (the call to sacrifice Isaac), Abraham is asked to give up his future. “Go, you!” severs Abram/Abraham from everything human he would cling to for security and identity. In both cases, the order leaves Abram/Abraham solely with God. No past, no future, no family, no land, no people. Just God. The takeaway: If you’re going to follow God or God’s leading, you might as well go big or stay home. Go big and go God!

What Does the Text Say?

In only four verses, the writer describes the creation of an entire people and the establishment of a radically new kind of relationship between humanity and divinity. The “call of Abram” does more than separate a lone herdsman from his ancestral family. This “call” separates the old animistic, anthropocentric notions of the universe from a remarkably new way of viewing the divine/human or creator/creation relationship. Abram’s family was from Ur, a large city and a major center for the worship of the moon god, Sin. Don’t let the brevity of this passage fool you; it is foundational to biblical theology. Key themes and words of this and related passages include the following: God’s remarkable call/command and Abraham’s trusting, obedient response; God’s promises that Abraham will have “a great name,” innumerable offspring (he would be the ancestor of “a great nation” — Genesis 17:5 says “a multitude of nations”), land and God’s blessing (contrasted to curse). He’ll be a blessing to others. God’s presence will be with him.

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

The Offer Explained. This text links nicely with the Abram story in Genesis 12:1-4a. Here in Romans, the offer made to Abram in Genesis is explained. Abram was able to leave country, kindred and home because he had faith. The object of his faith was God. Abram believed that God kept promises. Today, when you see a blazing announcement that something is “FREE,” you had better take a closer look. Perhaps it’s only free if you first buy the same item at full price. Then, the second one is thrown in free. Perhaps it is free only after you have paid for a one-year subscription. Then, you find out that only three days are free. And so on. Free things often have strings attached. In Abram’s case, there were no strings involved, except he had to act. He had to lay hold of the promise. And the act of grabbing God is called faith. And it made him a righteous person. Such grabbing will make us righteous as well.

What Does the Text Say?

In the opening part of this passage, Paul refers to Abraham, “our ancestor according to the flesh,” (v. 1) to underscore his point that boasting is possible only for those who seek to justify themselves by their works (v. 2; cf. 3:27). After quoting Genesis 15:6 in verse 3, Paul employs a common economic principle to further illustrate his point. Whereas wages are earned by means of work, justification is God’s gift via faith (v. 4). Indeed, Paul’s conviction about “such faith” is absolute: Anyone “who without works trusts him (God) who justifies the ungodly” (both circumcised and uncircumcised; cf. 3:30) is justified just like Abraham (cf. vv. 3, 5). Paul’s certainty that “such faith” produced “righteousness” flowed directly from his understanding of Israel’s initial eponymous ancestor, Abraham. In Paul’s retelling of that ancient story, God’s promise to Abraham was that “he would inherit the world” (v. 13). It was a promise rooted in faith. Consequently, to be an heir of Abraham required faith, not adherence to the law, that would necessarily void the promise (vv. 14-15). To press his point, Paul states unequivocally that the promise “depends on faith” and “rest[s] on grace” so all might be saved, both “adherents of the law” as well as “those who share the faith of Abraham” (v. 16). As Paul makes clear, such faith resides in a God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (v. 17) — things such as Abraham’s future descendants and heirs who didn’t exist when Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Worship Resources

Leader: God of rainbow and promise,

People: God of the swirling waters of baptism,

Leader: God of the dark night of doubt,

People: God of comfort and call,

Leader: Dwell with us as we journey through this season of Lent.

All: And lead us from temptation to trust, from fear to love, from despair to hope, and from sadness to joy.

Call: I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?

Response: My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

Leader: He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand;
The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life;
The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
Go in peace.

—Based on Psalm 121

Come to us, O Lord — you who created the mountains, silent and immovable.

Ease the pounding of our hearts, as we recall those things in life we most fear.

Quiet our anxious minds.

Steady our frenetic, hurried pace with a calming vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give to us, amidst the confusion and clamor of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills.

Teach us the art of seeing the world as you see it: as a place of beauty and wonder.

Most of all, teach us to trust you in all things: knowing that, truly, you are our keeper.

Amen.

Hymns
Now, on Land and Sea Descending
I to the Hills Will Lift My Eyes
Sing Praise to God, Who Reigns Above
Worship and Praise*
He Will Keep You (Psalm 121) (Kauflin, Zimmer)
Desert Song (Fraser)
Shepherd (Hill)

*For licensing and permission to reprint or display these songs on screen, go to ccli.com. The worship and praise songs suggested by Homiletics can be found in most cases on Google by using the title as the search term.

COMMENTARY

on Psalm 121