I Will Lift My Eyes (Artful Devotion)

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.

The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

—Psalm 121

+++

SONG: “Traveler’s Psalm” by Donald Boyd | Arranged and performed by Andy Zipf, on Traveler’s Psalms and Carols (2009)

https://open.spotify.com/track/3ixEsmd1RZr1NRupQGswwd?si=CT969notT1Cn8kLsUS3nlA

I will lift my eyes unto the hills
Whence cometh my help
My help cometh from the Lord
Who made heaven and earth
He will not allow my foot to stumble
For he’s always on my side
And he’ll guide me through all of the days of my life
Now and forevermore

Andy Zipf received this original song from his maternal grandfather, Donald Boyd (1919–1998), who, in addition to writing hymns, was the choir director of a church in Roland, Iowa, for fifty-one years. He had bought Zipf his first guitar and always encouraged him to sing. As a tribute to Grandpa Boyd and his formative impact, Zipf has made the song available for free download at Bandcamp.

+++

The dusky, reverberant landscape painting Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is by Colin McCahon [previously] shows a sun setting behind a range of dark New Zealand hills, with a gray body suggesting water in the midground. Art critic Justin Paton surmises that the mysterious form in the upper left corner (which he jokingly calls “the windshield wiper of God”) is the tail of a cross, because McCahon did a whole series of drawings of flying crosses within landscapes.

“I think it’s a kind of resurrection painting,” Paton said in an RNZ Saturday Morning interview last November. “It’s talking about the way in which an immense spiritual event could shake your world, but then you go to bed and you wake up the next day. It is still the same world, but how has it altered?” Paton continues, “He [McCahon] deals in visions, he deals in miracles, he deals in cataclysmic and elating spiritual events, but it’s always earthed in the everyday—in a world we recognize, a world we can smell . . .” The medium in Tomorrow is commercial flooring paint mixed with sand.

This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for the Second Sunday of Lent, cycle A, click here.