With all the bad things that have happened to the writers of the Psalms thus far, you have to wonder if the author of Psalm 121 wasn’t a unique individual for whom everything just seemed to go right. Though they are both “songs of ascents” (hymns to be sung on the way to worship), and though they both begin the same way (“I lift up my eyes” – the only psalms to use that phrase), surely they couldn’t be written by the same person!
Perhaps not, but it wouldn’t matter.
Throughout the psalms, in their weakest moments, the most vulnerable of situations, the writers confess their confidence that God is near. Even when they say they think He’s not, they still cry out to Him because they know, however they feel, that God is near.
Psalm 121 however doesn’t just confess a belief in the nearness of God, but in the ever present protection of God. “He will not let your foot slip. . . He watches over you . . . He will keep you from harm . . . He will watch over your life . . . forevermore.”
I love passages of assurance and this one reminds me of a New Testament text, 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24. “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” Passages like that are worth committing to memory, burying them in your heart where they can grow and change your life to become the fearless and confident individual God intends you to be.