Are you a Snoopy fan? Sometimes he gives us a really good message. I have just read a message which I thought was really helpful. He said: ‘Keep looking up …….that’s the secret of life.” In the Book of Proverbs verse 25 says: “Keep your head up, your eyes straight ahead, and your focus fixed on what is in front of you.”
In Psalm 121 King David says in the first line: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” When David became king, he wanted to remember that even in the darkest places, God was still there, leading him, protecting him, fulfilling the promise He had given him when he was a youth, even when it seemed impossible. There are other examples in the Bible where individuals lifted up their eyes and saw God. Three examples to illustrate this: First for the apostle Peter, the “hills” he looked to might have been a memory of the problems he had when he followed Jesus as a disciple, knowing that Jesus loved him and protected him and eventually filled him with His Holy Spirit to do miracles and preach with power. Secondly: For Jesus, the “hills” He looked to were the cross of Calvary that He had to endure for the joy that He knew was set before Him on the other side. Third: For Joseph of the book of Genesis, the “hills” he looked to in Chapters might have been a memory of his years in the dungeon, waiting for God’s purposes to be fulfilled.
Now I invite you to do something yourselves: Lift up your eyes to your own “hills.” What are your own hills? They might include your times of greatest darkness and despair, when it seemed that God had forgotten you, but when afterwards you could look back to see that He was really holding you. He was there.
There is no doubt, however, that if any one of us lifts up our eyes to the heavens we would see the same events that have always been there for us to see: the sunrise or sunset, the moon and the stars, clouds drifting across. Jesus saw them as did all people during their lives. King David wrote about 1000 years before Jesus “The heavens declare the glory of God”, so, wherever we live and whatever we are doing, always try to remember to do as Snoopy says “Keep looking up!”