Someone to Watch Over Me
Did George Gershwin know how to write them or what? Published in 1926, this torch song, one of the Standards of singers through the past century, still draws in its hearers. When Ella sings the lines, “Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?” in the lead-in stanza, and the passage “Oh, how I need, someone to watch over me,” it strikes a deep chord.
It is a love song, so the words apply to a longing for that someone out there to love, one who brings security. As that string is plucked, what also reverberates is the colossal, existential need we have for love and the security of our being. A person yearns for human love in its variety, but also for universal security from a Shepherd—one great beyond imagining.
When in danger (such as are people in the path of a devastating hurricane) all other legitimate preoccupations fall away. And certainly, trivial preoccupations fall away. We take Psalm 121 on our lips and hear ourselves calling for help. We look to the hills as a visual reminder of the majesty of the great things of creation. But we look through them to the one who made them, to the “maker of heaven and earth”. Here are three of the powerful eight verses of Psalm 121:
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills; *
from where is my help to come?
2 My help comes from the Lord, *
the maker of heaven and earth.
8 The Lord shall watch over your going out and your coming in, *
from this time forth for evermore.
This psalm is perhaps the song of the pilgrim who has completed his journey to the Temple in Jerusalem. Like the fourteen or so other psalms of assent, the focus is on divine joy and assurance within the person making their way up to God’s seat on earth, Jerusalem. This psalm might have a different edge: goal accomplished, the pilgrim now looks for God’s help to make the descent back home. It is dangerous out there on the trip home. The first two verses reference the creation, and the last verse references eternity. Singing it, we are calling out to God for help, we who live our days between the beginning and the end of time.
As autumn begins, we look to celebrate St. Francis Day, and this is the psalm that comes with readings assigned to the Eucharist Feast of this beloved saint. In the spirit of Francis, we want to look to God knowing there is no better place to look. Things relentlessly grab our attention and we let them. Francis and other figures of wisdom call the pressures that tug at us the vanities of this world. If your experience matches mine, you know we have them in spades. As mentioned above, when we are mortally threatened, they fall away, but Francis promotes a life in Christ where their power over us stays away. We renounce the vanities, and take up the love of God, delight in the handiwork of the Creator, and the highest kind of joy:
Most high, omnipotent, good Lord, grant your people grace to renounce gladly the vanities of this world; that, following the way of blessed Francis, we may, for love of you, delight in your whole creation with perfectness of joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let vanities drop aside. In our need, we look to the hills, and beyond them to the maker of hills, mountains, and of all creation. Sing it out; pray it, in your own words—plead for full assurance that God has you covered. We have all learned as human adults that, to the extent we can, we must look after ourselves, to be sure. But as people of faith, we also know that in the most ultimate of ways God watches over us. The one who made everything is the truly Loving One: the one Who will watch over you, in days of ease and days of danger, indeed, from this time forth forever more.