The Helper Who Never Falls Asleep

Three times a year, God's people walked to Jerusalem for the feasts,
and Jerusalem sat on top of the hills,
so every road to it went up.
(That is why the songs they sang on the way
are called the Songs of Going Up.
Their legs knew why.)

A boy walked that road with his father,
dust on his sandals, a water skin bumping his back.
Ahead of them the hills rose, steep and brown,
full of rocks and caves
and good places for a robber to hide.

The boy looked up at them, and he sang:

"I lift up my eyes to the hills.
Where will my help come from?"

Then he answered himself:

"My help comes from the LORD,
who made the sky and the earth."

(Who made those hills too,
robbers' caves and all.)

His father sang back to him,
taking the next part of the song:

"He will not let your foot slip.
The one who keeps you
will not doze off.
Look! The one who keeps Israel
never gets sleepy,
and he never sleeps."

That night they camped beside the road.
Uncle Ezra fell asleep by the fire
with his mouth wide open,
snoring like a camel.
The man on guard yawned,
and yawned again,
and his chin sank down onto his chest.
By midnight everyone in the camp was asleep.
The LORD was not.

In the morning the sun came up hot.
By noon the stones on the path
were too hot to touch,
and the boy walked close in his father's shadow.

"The LORD keeps you," his father sang.
"The LORD is your shade,
right there beside you.
The sun will not strike you by day,
or the moon by night."

(In those days some people thought moonlight
could make you sick while you slept.
The song covered the moon too.)

"The LORD will keep you from all harm.
He will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out
and your coming in,
from now on and forever."

On the last morning they climbed the final hill,
and there was the city,
white walls shining,
the temple on the top.
The boy ran ahead, singing.
When the feast was over,
he would sing it all the way home.

But the song promised a Keeper nobody could see.
Feast after feast, the boys who sang it grew old,
and even the best fathers on the road had to sleep.

One Passover,
another man came up the road with his friends.
He had walked it with his family since he was a boy.
At night he went to a garden
on the hill across from the city.
"Stay awake with me," he said, and went off to pray.
Three times he came back,
and three times his friends were asleep.
The first time, he said to Peter,
"Could you not keep watch with me for one hour?"

When soldiers came with torches,
he stepped out in front of them.
"If I am the one you want, let these men go."

He had told his Father,
"I have not lost one of those you gave me."
Jesus kept watch while his friends slept,
and then let the soldiers take him instead of them.