Reflection on Psalm 121

by Ken Howcroft.

Methodist Conference Monday 30 June 2025

This was a reflection I was asked to give at evening prayer on the Monday evening of the Conference at Telford. The references to particular hills are to those in the region, but in your imagination you can change them to hills that you know. Similarly the reference to the Conference Agenda can stand for anything that you have been doing.

Psalm 121

¹ I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    from where will my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
⁸ The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.

Introduction

Many parts of scripture, and the Psalms in particular, provide words that are intended to prompt you to form images or even short films in your imagination. I hope that you were doing that whilst you were reading that Psalm. I hope that you will continue doing it as you read this reflection on it.

Reflection

At the end of a long, hard day I feel the need to look up from the Agenda and out beyond these walls. In my imagination I look out at the natural beauties of the Wrekin, the South Shropshire Hills and the Welsh mountains beyond. I can also see homes and workplaces, sacred places of worship, palaces of shopping, playspaces of sport and entertainment. Or in my mind’s eye I can look at huge screens livestreaming social media with celebrity gossip and other trivia interspersed with news of natural disasters, droughts, famines, refugees, wars and rumours of wars. All of these things can distract me, but in the end they leave me saying ‘vanity of vanities’, emptiness piled on emptiness. None seem able to help me. 

Yet perhaps to expect them to help me is to make idols out of them rather than icons through which I can know God – the God who comes before all things, goes beyond all things and holds all things and all experience within themselves. As George Herbert put it, I can look at the glass of a telescope lens and only see my own reflection or I can put it to my eye and see the heavens through it. It is when I have done the latter that I have started to find real help.

It is when I remember this that I can start to hear another still, small voice addressing me. Parts of the Psalms and the prophetic writings are like playscripts where the different characters and who is saying what and when are no longer indicated. So, is this still, small voice that I am starting to hear another aspect of me, part of a conversation going on within me? Or is it a prophet, pastor, preacher or priest speaking to me? Or is it God? Or a mixture of all of those? You will need to step into the Psalm to decide for yourselves.

And what is the voice saying? It is saying a mixture of promise and blessing. Above all, in our goings out and our comings in at this Conference and in every other aspect of our life, seen or unseen, (as Mr Wesley reputedly said even on his deathbed) “God is with us.”