Day 55: I Lift My Soul
Read: Psalm 25:1–5
To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.
— Psalm 25:1 (ESV)
Reflect
Psalm 25 begins with a single, simple line: "To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul."
The word is 'essa, "I lift." It is a common verb in the Old Testament, used for lifting, carrying, bearing a load. Here David picks up his whole self and raises it toward God.
Now look back one psalm. Psalm 24 described the person who may stand in God's holy place: one "who does not lift up his soul to what is false" (Psalm 24:4). It is the same phrase. Lift up the soul.
Put those two verses side by side and you see something important. Everyone lifts their soul somewhere. The only question is to what.
Some lift their soul to money, or to the approval of others. Some lift it to a screen, to the news, to a fear they rehearse every night. None of those things can carry it. They are, in the psalm's word, false.
David chooses. "To you." He puts God first in the sentence, before he even names what he is doing. The direction matters more than the effort.
Where you lift your soul is where you live.
This same verb comes back later in the psalm, when David asks God to carry away his sin (v. 18). He lifts his soul; God lifts his guilt.
Across Scripture
David prays the same words elsewhere: "to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul" (Psalm 86:4; see also 143:8). Lamentations calls, "Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven" (Lamentations 3:41). Paul gives believers a similar daily direction: "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth" (Colossians 3:2).
Sit With It
Where do you lift your soul when no one is watching: your phone, your fear, the news, him? Turn it toward him for one minute right now.
Pray
To you I lift up my soul.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.