“I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?”

— Psalm 121:1

I love the Psalms of Ascent. They remind me of camp songs.

I grew up in West Texas, spending every summer at Sacramento Methodist Assembly in New Mexico. We sang silly songs, so many silly songs, usually around lunch. I remember one called, “Here We Stand Like Starving Methodists.” There was “Rise and Shine,” telling the whole Noah story, and “Deep and Wide,” and the “B-I-B-L-E.”

In my years of ministry, I’ve loved passing those songs on to the next generation, even if they haven’t loved them quite as much as I did.

Those songs place me in a specific time and space. I can feel the mountain air, smell the trees, sense the hills I had to climb (why is everything uphill at church camp?).

I imagine the Psalms of Ascent like that. In my mind, the Israelites sang them as they walked — always uphill again — toward Jerusalem. In my sacred imagination, I hear them in call and response:

I lift up my eyes to the hills Where does my help come from? My help is in the name of the Lord Who made heaven and earth

That may not have been the precise Sitz im Leben of these psalms, but we do believe they were travel songs. They gave voice to pilgrims on the move.

Travel in the ancient Near East was dangerous, especially through the wilderness. The wilderness was land without a keeper. If you passed through cultivated territory, someone was responsible for your safety. But in the wilderness? You were, or at least felt, utterly on your own.

And yet, in our Scriptures, the wilderness has no keeper but God. God is the one who keeps.

We lift our eyes to the hills and see danger. We feel the relentless sun and wonder how we will endure. And we know, even now, how fragile safety can be. A nurse shows up at a protest and is killed. A mother drives away from confrontation and is killed. A parent goes to work and does not return. Who is their keeper?

I lift my eyes to the hills; from where does my help come?

To step into the wilderness requires faith. Trust. And if we are honest, bravery. It takes courage to set out, not fully certain how we will be kept. The pilgrims did it thousands of years ago. We do it still.

Perhaps we sing to remind ourselves that even in danger, God watches over us. God sees our steps. God keeps our coming and our going.

Beloved, in these long nights and deep shadows, we hold on for one another. We sing for one another. And when fear confronts us, we sing all the louder.