The Guardian Who Never Sleeps

In 1964, a seventeen-year-old San Diego student named Randy Gardner stayed awake for eleven consecutive days as a science fair experiment. By day three, he was hallucinating. By day five, he could no longer recognize simple objects. By day eleven, he could barely speak. Researchers discovered what most of us have always known: the human body cannot sustain an endless vigil. Every watchman must eventually close his eyes.

This is why Psalm 121 is so striking. The writer was likely a pilgrim traveling the dangerous road from Jericho to Jerusalem — a journey through wild hill country where bandits hid and heat exhaustion could strike without warning. He looks up at those rocky ridges and asks the question every traveler asks in the dark: "Where does my help come from?"

The answer he gives is breathtaking in its specificity. Not the hills themselves — those can offer nothing. But the One who made the hills, who shaped every ridge and carved every valley. And that One, the psalmist insists, "will neither slumber nor sleep."

What no human protector can promise, God promises without qualification. While every earthly guardian eventually surrenders to exhaustion, your Keeper remains wide awake — not vigilant despite weariness, but incapable of sleep by nature. He does not drift off. He does not miss a moment. Your coming and your going, in every season of your life, are watched by One for whom wakefulness is not an effort but an attribute. The hills are silent at midnight. The Maker of the hills is not.