("Bennachie: For Aileen.") Tapestry designed in memory of our daughter Aileen who loved this view of the hills.)
When the world around us changes rapidly, and beyond recognition, it helps if we can hold on to something familiar. These days though, our world has become strange and unfamiliar and the landscape around us more threatening than reassuring.
These past few weeks we’ve very quickly had to get used to the reality that the world is not in a good place. Yet our lives must go on. Our journey continues, even as we try to discern the presence of God in all that’s going on?
Psalm 121 was written for pilgrims heading off to Jerusalem, hundreds of miles away through desert, mountains and bandit country. It was sung by anxious travellers as they set off on a journey full of risks, many of them unseen but real. Here are some questions to ask as you imagine those scared but determined pilgrims: What was it like for pilgrims setting out on the long dangerous journey to Jerusalem, hoping to get there safely to worship God at the Temple? How would they know the way? Could they trust the guides? Would there be bandits on the road? What about wild animals, landslides, or sunstroke in a desert with no water? Where would help come from in life threatening emergencies? This Psalm answers questions like these.
“I look to the hills, where does help come from? Help comes from the Lord.” Faith isn’t permission to close our eyes to danger. Nor is faith reckless about taking risks. But on the long journey of our lives, as we look to the hills where danger, risk and trouble might await us, faith is knowing the Lord is to be trusted.
Psalm 121 is a faith tonic. It was prayed before the pilgrims left on the journey, and it was sung on arrival at the Temple. In between, there was the journey, long, scary, far from home, and no guarantees of safety. Who can they rely on in a strange land, tramping along an unknown road, passing through dangerous mountains? Same answer. The Lord. Help comes from Him.
“He will not let your foot slip” – think of rocky screes like the Cairngorms, and walking in sandals or even bare feet. But the Lord guides your footsteps and will not let your foot slip.
At night, when sleeping round a campfire with somebody else keeping watch, don’t worry. Even if they fall asleep, the Lord doesn’t nod off and leave you unguarded. “The Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps…”
Yes the sun will be hot, relentless, and drain you of energy and hydration, but the Lord is like the parasol over your garden table, you won’t get sunstroke. Even at night when the moon was thought to affect people’s minds and emotions, the Psalmist says, God has that covered too.
“The Lord will keep you from all harm” – he will watch over your life.” We never walk alone, whatever the landscape. Whatever the dangers and risks and troubles, the Lord is our keeper. That doesn’t mean nothing can happen to us; it does mean nothing can happen that separates us from the love of Christ.
“The Lord watches over your comings and goings”, out and in, all the way there and all the way back. This is a Psalm to be said or prayed or sung, especially when the journey ahead scares us. I’d like to suggest we take it as our prayer for this week, and beyond. I’ve included it below in the words of the old Scottish Paraphrase.
What this Psalm does is lift our eyes to the hills, and then beyond the hills to the Lord who made heaven and earth. Praying this so long ago psalm lifts our eyes and our heart beyond our fears about the pandemic, and our anxieties about the journey ahead which will take us over scary territory, in a world now made strange. Remember, “Help comes from the Lord”
The instincts of Israel were to trust and to depend on the God who promised to be there for them, and with them. As Christians we have come to know this same God revealed in Christ, crucified and risen. Ours is a faith whose foundation pillars are plunged deep in love that is eternal, grace that is sufficient for our needs, and an everlasting mercy underwritten by the power and purpose of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In coming days and weeks we will all lift your eyes to the hills, and wonder where help comes from. Listen for the answer, “Help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” And daily pray this Psalm, about the “Lord who watches over your coming and going, both now and evermore”,
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