117. Hold thou me up. As a nurse holds up a little child. And I shall be safe. Unless thou hold me up I shill be filling about like an infant that is weak upon its knees. We are saved by past grace, but we are not safe unless we receive present grace. The psalmist had vowed to keep the Lord’s commands, but here he pleads with the Lord to keep him. Our version reads the word uphold (verse 116), and then hold up; and truly we need this blessing in every shape in which it can come, for in all manner of ways our adversaries seek to cast us down. To be safe is a happy condition; there is only one door to it, and that is to be held up by God himself; thank God, that door is open to the least among us. And I will have respect unto thy statutes continually. In obedience is safety; in being held up is obedience. No man will outwardly keep to the Lord’s statutes for long together unless he has an inward respect for them, and this will never be unless the hand of the Lord perpetually upholds the heart in holy love. Perseverance to the end, obedience continually, comes only through the divine power; we start aside as a deceitful bow unless we are kept right by him that first gave us grace. Happy is the man who realizes this verse in his life: upheld through his whole life in a course of unswerving integrity, he becomes a safe and trusted man, and maintains a sacred delicacy of conscience which is unknown to others. He feels a tender respect for the statutes of the Lord, which keeps him clear of inconsistencies and conformities to the world that are so common among others, and hence he is a pillar in the house of the Lord.
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