When we lift our hands, we are lifting them to something to bless it, congratulate it, adore it. When you lift your hands when your football team scores, it’s a non-verbal congratulations 🎉. When you lift your hands to an authority it’s a non-verbal surrender. And when you lift your hands to God in worship, it’s to bless, praise, adore, thank the Lord. But the psalmist adds another aspect to lifting your hands. He says it’s not just to someone for something, he says your to lift your hands TO the sanctuary. It’s a directional lifting, a non-verbal acknowledgement of a place that is unseen but very real.

Psalm 134:2 “Lift up your hands to the sanctuary and bless the LORD.”

When we lift our hands directionally to the sanctuary, it’s not the building your standing in when you do it, it’s to the temple, the city, the heavenly Jerusalem that is unseen but very real. Hebrews, Revelation and Abraham spoke of this place. Abraham even left everything to find the city whose builder and maker is God. Revelation 21:2 says that city is the wife of the Lamb, adorned like a bride. “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” As you lift your hands today for various reasons, add lifting your hands to the sanctuary for though it’s unseen it’s very real, and bless the Lord!