Trouble has a posture. Chin down, shoulders curled, eyes locked on the six inches in front of your face — a screen, a bill, the same paragraph of the same worried thought. The problem fills your whole field of vision because you've made your field of vision exactly the size of the problem.

The psalmist starts in an odd place: not with an answer, but with a neck movement. I will lift up my eyes. Then, only then, the question — where does my help come from? The order is the whole trick. He doesn't figure things out and then look up. He looks up, and the question becomes possible. Attention comes first. Help arrives through a door you have to be facing.

You don't need to believe anything to test this. Walk to a window. Find the farthest thing you can see — a ridge, a rooftop, the end of the street — and let your eyes rest there for a minute. Notice what distance does to the mind: things regain their actual size. The psalmist says help comes from whoever made what you're looking at. Start where he started. Look up before you ask.