Psalm 121 opens with this much-loved line, 'I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help.' The whole psalm assures us of the Lord's continual help; He helps, holds us safe, keeps us, shades us, and preserves us.

Natural images and sensations are used to describe spiritual ones: our eyes and feet, sleep, shade, hills, sun, and moon. They remind us of the correspondences between the natural and spiritual planes of life, helping to express these higher ideas in familiar words.

Spiritually, our eyes represent our understanding. Hills are high places; we look up to them, and we can see long distances from their summits. When we lift up our eyes to the hills, we're consciously trying to elevate our minds to new levels of understanding. Note that here, we're not told to look up to majestic mountains, since they can sometimes be too far, too remote, from our daily life. We just need to look up to nearby hills, to raise our minds above our normal ways of thinking. In the Bible, hills represent good that comes from charity. That kind of good -- a love towards our neighbours - also turns us toward the Lord, who then can more readily deepen and infill that neighbourliness. (Apocalypse Explained 374[5])

Our feet are in contact with the ground, and they hold us up. They represent our natural life. The 'foot not to be moved' is our life's intention, to be standing firm with the Lord's support. (Heaven and Hell 96, 97)

To say that the Lord never sleeps is to state the obvious, as Divine influx must be perpetual to maintain all things. This an important reminder for us, though, because sometimes we feel that the Lord is not with us. However, the Lord is, in fact, always with us and is actually closer to us at such times. (See True Christian Religion 774)

Next, we see that the Lord's presence is active. He is our keeper and our shade. He continually knows what our state is, and provides and protects accordingly. He even withholds spiritual things from us at times, so that we don't spoil them. (See Arcana Caelestia 59[2], and 959 at the end.)

The word 'shade' gives us a good feeling that the Lord is over us, keeping us safe. It can also mean that we occasionally require shade — that is, less sight and clearness — for our own sake. (See Apocalypse Explained 401[34])

The sun and moon often represent the Lord's love and His truth. In this psalm, though, they are used in the opposite sense. They stand for our evil love of self and the false ideas that reinforce it - and those will harm us - unless we accept the Lord's power to constrain them.

At the end of this psalm the word 'preserve' is used three times to express holiness. The repetition is important. It represents our need for preservation in every conceivable way — from now to eternity - throughout our "going out and coming in" - the changing states in our lives. (See Arcana Caelestia 1050)

59. The reason only edible and green plants are mentioned here as food for the natural man is this: While a person is being regenerated and becoming spiritual he is involved constantly in conflict, which is why the Lord's Church is called militant. For before regeneration started, evil desires were in control, since the whole person consisted entirely of evil desires and resulting falsities. During the process of regeneration his desires and falsities cannot be done away with instantly, since that would amount to destroying the whole person; indeed he has not acquired any other life for himself. So for a long time evil spirits are left with him to activate his desires, and so release them in countless ways. Indeed the spirits are left there to do this in order that those desires may be turned by the Lord towards something good, and in this way the person may be reformed. In the hour of conflict evil spirits are present who absolutely hate everything that is good and true, that is, every element of love and faith in the Lord - elements that alone are good and true because they contain eternal life. These evil spirits leave a person with no other food than that which is compared to edible and green plants. But the Lord gives him a food as well that is compared to the plant yielding seed and to the tree in which there is fruit. These are periods of peace and calm attended by their forms of delight and happiness. This cycle occurs repeatedly.

[2] If the Lord did not protect man moment by moment, and in every shortest instant, he would immediately perish, for there is such murderous hatred reigning in the world of spirits against all forms of love and faith in the Lord as to defy description. I can positively declare that this is so, because for several years now, although still in the [physical] body, I have also been in the next life in the company of spirits. I have been surrounded by evil spirits, even the worst of them, sometimes by thousands, who have been allowed to pour out their venom and molest me in every possible way, but who nevertheless could do no harm to the tiniest hair on my head, so well did the Lord protect me. From all these years of experience I have become thoroughly informed about the character of the world of spirits and also about the conflict which people who are being regenerated must inevitably undergo if they are to attain the happiness of eternal life. But because nobody from just a general description can be so well informed as to have a faith free from doubt, these matters in the Lord's Divine mercy will therefore be noted in greater detail later on.