By Pastor Don Schatz

Kept By God

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.”
Psalm 121:7 English Standard Version

My nephew was hit by another car at highway speed and knocked into oncoming traffic.  After being hit yet again, the vehicle rolled multiple times and ended up 200 feet into a field.  He crawled out of the wreckage on his own, with many abrasions and a sore back.  As my wife would say, “His guardian angel was featherless.”

When I see the picture of him saying good-bye and ‘thank you’ to his car the next day, I can think only one word:  Miracle.  It is a pretty extreme example of God ‘keeping your life’, but it is a really good example!  The word ‘keep’ in the Hebrew has the sense of keep watch over, guard/protect.  There is no doubt in my mind that the Lord was doing that and more for my nephew.

Psalm 121 is one of the ‘Songs of Ascent’.  Many suggest that they were pilgrimage songs sung by the faithful as they made their way to Jerusalem for major festivals like Pentecost, Yom Kippur or Passover.  We find ourselves today on our Lenten journey with Christ.  In Christ God fulfills the Psalmists words: “The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.”  We are precious to the Lord.

Like us, God keeps precious things close to himself.  Unlike us, he doesn’t lock them up in a curio cabinet, a safe, or a safe deposit box.  He keeps us right here–in the world to be a blessing to the world by living the Christ-life.  He surrounds our living with the promise of eternal life.  He takes our present and our future and wraps them together in eternity.  Through every experience, God keeps us precious to himself.  He will do so throughout life, through death, and into Glory with himself.  Even there, we will not be tucked away to gather dust.  We will worship him fully, even as we do now.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado