The notebook · July 22, 2026

Lifting My Eyes

I had read Psalm 121 dozens of times before I noticed it began with a gesture, not an idea. “I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?” I took it for a turn of phrase, an old way of saying you are looking for help. Then one morning when my head was low — literally, chin on my chest, eyes on my hands resting on the table — I remembered the line, and I took it at its word. I lifted my eyes.

It is nothing, lifting your eyes. It is the first movement of a child looking for someone in a room. But I had grown used to living with my gaze pulled down: onto the screen, the list, the next step to take. My worry, too, looked downward, turned inward, taking inventory of all that was wrong. Lifting my eyes, that morning, was physical first — the neck straightening, the chest opening a little. And then, without my deciding it, something else followed the movement.

The psalm does not stop at the question; it answers at once. “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” What struck me was the order of things. The gesture first, the answer after. As though you could not receive the answer with your head bowed. As though you had to look somewhere other than yourself before help had a way in.

I do not want to make a recipe of it. Some mornings I lift my eyes and feel nothing but a ceiling. The gesture does not manufacture the presence; it only turns me toward it, in case. But there is a difference between looking for help in the dark of your own head and looking for it with your eyes lifted — even toward a sky that stays silent. The body takes the posture of waiting, and waiting, sometimes, is already a prayer.

Today, when I feel my chin drop, I will try that tiny gesture: lift my eyes before searching any further. In Manna, a word waits for me this morning to lift my eyes with me.