Lift your eyes to the Lord
Miriam Thurlow writes:
The final line of our Network Vacancy prayer is ‘We choose to keep on trusting and following you’. This is both a daily invitation from Jesus and an intentional choice we get to make as His disciples. But how do we do this?
I want to suggest it starts by lifting our eyes to the Lord. What happens when we do this?
We start to remember who God is
We start to hear what He is saying to us (and be able to ask Him what His plan is)
We start to see differently (not ignoring the challenges or dismissing the pain but seeing it differently)
Therefore, lifting our eyes enables movement, to keep walking with Jesus, and He wants us to walk with Him.
But the truth is, we don’t always look to Him; quite often we do things in our own strength and according to our own plan. Sometimes, when things get tough we don’t move at all, we ignore the problem and stay still, trying to pretend it isn’t happening - we freeze. Sometimes we don’t keep walking with God, instead we try and run away as far as possible, so we don’t have to deal with the struggle, we flee. Sometimes we don’t run away from the issue but towards it, but with no real plan or thought of consequences, reacting rather than responding, we fight.
Now, fight, flight and freeze are responses our body make for survival and are good and proper in emergencies. However, if they are the place we operate from all the time it can become a problem, we get exhausted, we respond from fear rather than faith and we stop asking God what He is saying and what His plan is. They tend to force our eyes downwards, instead of lifting them to the Lord.
Psalm 121 reminds us why we lift our eyes to the Lord; it is a Psalm of confidence in who God is. It reminds us that God is where we look to for help because: He is the maker of heaven and earth, He will not let our foot slip, He does not sleep, He protects us day and night, He keeps us from evil, He keeps us now and forevermore. Psalm 121 reminds us we don’t always live an easy life, but we do live a well-armed one, one armed to be able to keep walking with Jesus.
We might come with tear-stained faces, we might come in pain, we might come in gratitude and joy, but however we come, we come choosing to fix our gaze on the Lord. To remember who God is, to listen to His voice and to begin to see differently.
Where are your eyes looking at the moment? Are they turned to the One from whom all our help comes, to the Lord who made heaven and earth, to the One who promised to not let our foot slip, to the Lord who does not sleep and who shelters and protects, to the one who is with you always?
Reverend Miriam Thurlow Associate Vicar CCBN
