Lifting Up My Soul

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. (Psalm 25:1 NRSV) When I’ve read this line previously, I’ve sometimes assumed that the main way I would lift up my soul was in personal prayer or corporate worship. I would measure whether I had lifted up my soul to God if I felt good feelings or experienced some sense of God with me. But what is my soul and how might I lift it up? The imagery of being lifted up here seems to be about buoyancy. Water lifts up a floating object like a piece of wood or a boat. A boat doesn’t expend immense effort to float. Floating is what happens when a boat is set in the…