It doesn’t take much to move from confidence to fear, does it? When my wife is late arriving home, I begin to worry and imagine worst-case scenarios. I act a lot like the Israelites who, after a stunning deliverance from Egypt, began to operate out of fear rather than faith. They told themselves that the journey was too hard and the enemy was too big. They forgot God’s promised blessing to keep them and watch over them. They forfeited their right to His protection.


So how could God make such an amazing promise to disobedient Israel? He could do so knowing that one day He would remove His fatherly hand of protection from His Son, Jesus, in Israel’s place and in our place, too.


God’s promises of Psalm 121 and Numbers 6 to “watch” and “keep” do not mean we won’t encounter difficulty in life. But our hardships do not have “any power to get between you and God, (to) dilute His grace in you, (or) to divert His will from you” (Eugene Peterson, 1980). In Christ, we know that God does indeed bless and keep us.