Living Wittily

Author: admin

  • Well Done Andy Murray – Congratulations Big Man!

    Murray

    This afternoon goes down as one of the best sporting days of my life. Maybe best of them all for feel good factor!

    Home grown excellence, huge commitment, an enigmatic but brilliant coach, the love of a nation, and a match that takes tennis to different levels of strength, emotional resilience and sheer imposition of will on ball and opponent.

    Accompanied by roast beef sandwiches, strawberries with cream and ice cream, and a box of hand made chocolates, a gift from a grateful neighbour whose garden I did gladly dig!

    It's been a great day 🙂

  • Did You Know that Yellow is the Colour of Praise?

    Yellow

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    e.e. cummings (1894–1962)

    I Thank You God…

    i thank You God for most this amazing
    day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
    and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
    which is natural which is infinite which is yes

    (i who have died am alive again today,
    and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
    day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
    great happening illimitably earth)

    how should tasting touching hearing seeing
    breathing any—lifted from the no
    of all nothing—human merely being
    doubt unimaginable You?

    (now the ears of my ears awake and
    now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

    The photo was taken in June looking towards the North Sea from St Cyrus. Forget Coldplay – this is yellow! The poem is one of my top 100 in any anthology, a kind of Psalm smorgasbord of praise and prayer. 

  • Of the reading of Biblical Commentaries – Well, Why Would You?

    It started with John Stott's Only One Way, his exposition of Galatians. It was 1972, in Crieff, while on Summer Mission, leading a three week party in the park for a couple of hundred children. The Summer Mission Team met after breakfast for bible study – we used Stott's book. A month later it was Frances Foulkes on Ephesians, then John Stott again this time on the Epistles of John, the best Tyndale NT Commentary of them all, I think.


    1827645So I was started on reading commentaries. Derek Kidner on the Psalms, JL Mays on Amos, Derek Nineham on Mark -     oops, my first encounter with liberal critical biblical scholarship – but that Pelican Commentary woke me up to the diversity of opinion and approaches to New Testament interpretation. By the time I was in College, Barrett on John, Cranfield on Romans, Childs on Exodus and so my own 40 year wanderings began, but not in the wilderness, in the orchards and vine groves of biblical exegesis, the fruit fields of text and context, and the wide harvest fields of Bible study where living bread is to be found, shared and enjoyed as food for the soul.

    I am in the process of rationalising my library, reducing it to fit into our house, more or less. There isn't much surplus in a library I've culled most years, not much that is no longer needed, or unlikely to be read again, or outdated and superceded. But yes, there will be some boxes of discarded, withdrawn, – to be sold, given away, or consigned to the charity shops. Commentaries are, more than many books, likely to date as scholarly fashions change, or more importantly new knowledge and fresh insights compel revision of thought. So yes, commentaries I once valued hugely have been superceded by new and more informed scholarship; reliable guides for one generation may be just as useful and dependable to the next generation. But in fact I've always kept the biblical section as current as I could afford, with the progressions of biblical studies


    MapservAmongst the interesting items in second hand bookshops are old ordinance survey maps; the one for the Cairngorms from the 1950's will still serve as a reliable map of the mountains; but the one for East Kilbride takes no account of the new town, the expanding connurbation of Glasgow, the motorway network and the many other changes to topography that must always be reflected in good cartography. Likewise with commentaries. Think of the commentary writer as a cartographer of the text, someone whose task is to convey as clearly and accurately as possible, the lie of the land, the notable features, the network of connections. Which brings me to the reason for this long preamble in a post where, if you're not into commentaries you may have already clicked to go elsewhere!

    Which would be a pity, because, this post already being long enough, you will have missed the promise to finish this story tomorrow 🙂 That post will be about exegetical integrity, or to put it in biblical language, 'rightly handling the word of truth', that Word which brings us into living relationship with the God made known to us in Jesus Christ, living and present in the church and the world by the Holy Spirit.

    For now here's Ched Meyers in his commentary on Mark, a book that is both more than a commentary, or maybe less than a commentary and more like a serious talking to by a coach who calls us to account for lack of commitment, under-performing and messing about when we should be focused on what our life is about.

    "In the continuous ideological struggle within the church  over christology, Mark stands  as the first attempt to assert a definitive "history" of Jesus. This story calls the reader back to the messianic practice that Jesus embodied, and which he enjoins on his followers in every age. Above all, the Gospel asserts the primacy of practice over speculative, cognitive faith. In the symbolic discourse of Mark, Jesus refuses to give a heavenly sign to his critics (8:12). The "sign" will appear only in the world and in history; the concrete practice of discipleship and the way of the cross.

    (Meyers, Binding the Strong Man, 2008, page 109)

    The tapestry is of the beautiful Hebrew word Hesed, variously lovingkindness, faithfulness, longsuffering, mercy. Myers would want these lovely abstract words concretised, because that's what following Jesus means – acting in a Hesed way.


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  • Trust is Backward Looking Too? If You Could, What Would You Change?

     

     

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    Sometimes when you look back this is what you see. Now it's an interesting perspective to think of your life as a journey and instead of its forward impetus and anticipated corners, you look back and see the way you've come. Except in this photo I didn't see much of the way I'd come because it's round the corner, behind me, out of sight. That too is an intriguing thought – not being able to see back round the corners you've just walked round so you have to remember what it was like, and memory is of course, selective.

    Looking back on the road into Kinloch Rannoch this is what I saw. The loch, 20 something miles long; mountains in the distance, layered, hazy and beckoning; less than a hundred metres of road I had just walked, sunlit and shadowed; and a canopy of trees enveloping the visible landscape. Robert Frost's poem about the road less travelled, and the road not taken is one of the great metaphors for reflection, regret, wistfulness or any other prompt for that unsettling question, "what if". What if I had chosen differently; what if I hadn't met this person; what if I had turned down the other job; what if I'd reacted differently; what if I'd shut up and listened. This can get really odd though – what if my mother and father had never met? What if I'd been born 6 foot tall – this is an impartial example, not a real regret – I like being small!

    My mother used to mock the 'what if' approach to life – with that mixture of Scottish commonsense and wry humour, "Well, if we'd ham we'd have ham and eggs, if we'd eggs", was her demoilition job on facing life's difficulties with a wish list. What that photo above teaches this man with a camera is that looking back, with apologies to Lot's wife, is sometimes as important as looking forward. And looking back honestly and humbly, the truth is we seldom see clearly the path we have taken, and even less clearly our motives and reasons for decisions, choices, steps taken on that road. The how and why we have come to this place in our lives we are convinced we remember well – but then memory is selective, partial, and as time and years pass, elusive. Sometimes it isn't the road not taken that makes us wonder – it can also be the road taken, with all its unforeseen corners, wrong turnings, confusing choices, impulsive maneouvres, strange meetings, near things, cliff edges, and just to make this string of metaphors utterly contextual and contemporary, pot-holes. 

    Looking back along this stretch of road, to the edge of the Loch and beyond to the mountains, with the road disappearing round the corner and the shaded and sunlit trees arching over it, I am OK with the journey so far. Would I have chosen differently – yes, maybe, sometimes. Were there wrong turnings – how can we know that? Would I wish some things to have been otherwise – oh I think so, I've never been able to say 'I'd never change a thing.' The two modern secular anthems, 'I Did It My Way' and 'Je ne regret rien' are way too arrogant for me to sing them – sometimes the things I regret are those things where I did it my way!!

    But what I like about that photo is the impossibility of the camera retracing my steps, the acceptance that past is past, that there are corners I can neither see round nor retrace steps towards. What I also see is beauty, distance, lancing sunlight, and green shaded shadow. And for all that, some small glimmer of what the Psalmist meant when he said "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." Looking back I say that too, with varying proportions of gratitude and hopefulness, and I hope, with enough humility to acknowledge the privilege and gift that is the wonder of my life.

  • The remedy for anxiety – naivete and a field full fo flowers!

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    Look at the flowers of the field… not even Solomon in all his glory….if your Heavenly Father so clothes the flowers….how much more you!

    Jesus at his most naive –

    Lord grant us just enough naivete to help cancel our cynicism, and turn trepidation to trust.

  • A Theology of Creation, and Recreation – God’s Sense of Humour.

    A four week old Malayan tapir calf takes a swim with mum Gertie at London Zoo. (Rex)

    God's aesthetic sense, maternal love, and the Creator's sense of humour in one picture – I love this:))

    Come on in, the water's lovely: A four-week -old Malayan tapir calf takes a swim with mum Gertie at London Zoo.

    This and other pictures over here

  • Will the Love of God Finally Triumph?


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    "Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered…" A whole biblical symphony of resolute hopefulness, risk-taking trust, imaginative thoughtfulness and not least redemptive peace-making surrounds those words with their own alternative-sounding reality. The love of God, of which we so often speak in terms that are glib, even unthinking, or exclusive, so often lacks the notes of holiness, mercy, justice and judgement. Divine love wins by sacrifice, overcomes by surrender, redeems by self-giving, but in the end is a love that is free and confers freedom, that is powerful but not overpowering, and that is holy and reaches out to hallow and sanctify all that falls short of the glory of God.

    All of this was in mind when I wrote yesterday of Stuart Townend's song and the way his words capture huge vistas of biblical vision and Gospel hope. I've just finished a book of essays on the love of God, Nothing Greater, Nothing Better. Theological Essays on the Love of God. The subtitle is accurate, the main title sounds like a bad line from a praise song, but the essays with only one or two exceptions are telling theological, at times pastoral or dogmatic, reflections on Divine love.I am entirely partial, but the essay that is standout for me is by my Doktovater David Fergusson, entitled, "Will the Love of God Finally Triumph".

    Here in a short essay is an articulated theology of God's love that recognises the nature of love as that which confers freedom because love's essence is relational freedom in which lover and beloved give and respond in grateful commitment and chosen joy. Compelled love is oppression; manipulative love is destructive; love cannot be deterministic and remain love. One of the greatest books ever on the love of God (I seldom use such exaggerated superlatives) is W H Vanstone's Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense. Its sub-title, The Response of Being to the Love of God. That book has provided me with a generous but honest vocabulary about love – precarious, out-going and out-giving, passionate, investment, self-donation, no guaranteed outcome, waiting; and Vanstone gathered much of that conceptuality into one of the finest hymns on the love of God that I know, Morning Glory, Starlit Sky.

    Back to Fergusson – I detect in Fergusson's critique of Barth's universalist tendency that same passionate acknowledgement that the love of God is not sentimental surrender to wishful thinking, nor is God's love a trawler net that hauls all human beings into the kingdom choiceless, and regardless of who and what in the end they choose to be and do with the gift of life. The voice of God is consistent with the love of God, 'I have set before you life and death, therefore choose life.'Love dies under coercion, and love lives always with the possibility of rejection – the Divine love defines love and though the love of God is unending, there will always be the possibility and reality of those whose choice is rejection, a final self-determining no.

    A good example of David Fergusson's theological instincts is when he puts in their place, those wistful non-universalists who desperately wish universalism was true but regrettably cannot make it so:

    Such remarks are puzzling. Are we saying that  God's final scheme is undesirable? Are we even suggesting that our own moral preferences are somehow better than God's? Can we claim to be evangelical if we hold that it would be good for universalism while also lamenting wistfully that this is not what God has on offer? There is a good dominical response to this: "If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your
    children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to
    those who ask him!" Matt. 7:11

    All of which brings me back to Stuart Townend's See What a Morning. What gives the hymn its theological, pastoral and liturgical power is the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus in the way Christians see the world. Love crucified is risen; love survives the violent attempts at its extinction; life says no to death; finality does not rest with despair but with hope; against the closing down of all possibilities, the love of God holds open possibilities infinite and eternal; and love remains love, the free offer of gift and the invitation to response in that same freedom.

    "To know the love of God that is beyond knowledge", indeed the entire doxological sections of Paul's Ephesians, is one of the great theological limiters on our intellectual hubris – even what we know is partial, finite, seeing through a glass darkly. We lack words and concepts, ideas and arguments; our imagination and vision and mental stretch and emotional range are inadequate to a different and vaster reality. 

    A closing challenge from Fergusson: "If choices are made only when made in the full knowledge of God's love in Christ, it is in the church that the burden of human responsibility is greatest".

    The photo is of Schiehallion, early morning, before we climbed it. Shrouded in mystery, much of it obscured but there in all its solid reality, waiting to be climbed but not conquered, providing a standpoint from which to view the world, and remember that this ancient mountain puts us firmly, finally, and faithfully, in our place!

  • The Resurrection is a doctrine of utter discontinuity…..

    Stuart Townend writes too many hymns, just like Charles Wesley and Graham Kendrick. And yes I do mention them all in the one sentence, because at their best the have given the Church some of the finest hymns in the worship repertoire. What makes a hymn  good, great, even classic is a seriously contested question and no obvious answers forthcoming. Rhythm, imagery, tune, resonant experience, affective power, words – yes, and perhaps the precise cultural moment the hymn is composed and first sung.

    Stuart Townend's "See what a morning", is one such hymn – theologically spacious, glistening with the imagery of hope, utterly Christocentric and rooted in Trinitarian faith, affirming of life and new beginnings and possibilities. I can't sing it without recognising the disjunct between this hymn and the litanies of despair and negativity that now dominate global news prostrate at the altar of The Economy. The irony is that the spacious, generous, inclusive safety of the term 'economy' is now lost in our worship of wealth, growth, the possession of power and the power of possession. The economy of salvation works quite differently in Christian theology, 'wrought in love, borne in pain, paid in sacrifice.'

    With a defiance every bit as unflinching as Paul in 1 Corithians 15, the hymn finishes each verse with the resurrection cry: "For he lives: Christ is risen from the dead!". Likewise the sixth line of each verse trumpets the great reversal of the Gospel, when all that ruins God's loving creative purposes is confronted with a power it can neither comprehend nor overcome. And the last verse is programmatic for the Church of Christ facing a world wearied and worn thin by human activity that is singlemindedly self-serving, and therefore resolutely destructive. To sing in such a world, "death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered", is to experience a trnasfigured worldview, to speak a different narrative, to look for a different ending that is in effect a new beginning.

    The scandal of the resurrection remains for all sophisticated cultures, the late post-modern West included, the most radical questioning of what matters most, the most outrageous statement of what is ultimate, and the clearest most compassionate reticence about all explanations of purpose and meaning in the face of human suffering and the pain of all creation. Resurrection is not a statement that it all worked out in the end; it is a doctrine of utter disconinuity, a divine reversal of the order of things, the working out of a different economy in which cost, sacrifice and loss are borne in a transfiguring act of Eternal Love.

    The Church is a resurrection community; a place where we are speaking life, stirring hope, bringing peace: a place where we sing and shout, "death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered"; for he lives, Christ is risen from the dead.  

     

    See what a morning, gloriously bright

    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;

    Folded the grave-clothes

    Tomb filled with light,

    As the angels announce Christ is risen!

    See God's salvation plan, wrought in love,

    Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,

    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,

    Christ is risen from the dead!

    See Mary weeping: 'Where is He laid?

    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;

    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name:

    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!

    The voice that spans the years,

    Speaking life, stirring hope,

    Bringing peace to us,

    Will sound till He appears,

    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!

    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,

    Through the Spirit

    Who clothes faith with certainty,

    Honour and blessing, glory and praise

    To the King crowned

    With power and authority!

    And we are raised with Him,

    Death is dead, love has won

    Christ has conquered;

    And we shall reign with Him,

    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!



    Stuart Townend & Keith Getty
    Copyright ©
    2003
    Thankyou Music     – See more at: http://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/see-what-a-morning/#sthash.MqYmBmvz.dpuf

     

    See, what a morning, gloriously bright,

    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;

    Folded the grave-clothes, tomb filled with light,

    As the angels announce, "Christ is risen!"

    See God's salvation plan,

    Wrought in love, borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,

    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man,

    For He lives: Christ is risen from the dead!


    See Mary weeping, "Where is He laid?"

    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;

    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name;

    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!

    The voice that spans the years,

    Speaking life, stirring hope, bringing peace to us,

    Will sound till He appears,

    For He lives: Christ is risen from the dead!


    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,

    Through the Spirit who clothes faith with certainty.

    Honor and blessing, glory and praise

    To the King crowned with pow'r and authority!

    And we are raised with Him,

    Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered;

    And we shall reign with Him,

    For He lives: Christ is risen from the dead!

    "See, What a Morning" (Resurrection Hymn)
    Words and Music by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend
    Copyright © 2003 Kingsway Thankyou Music

    See what a morning, gloriously bright
    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
    Folded the grave-clothes
    Tomb filled with light,
    As the angels announce Christ is risen!
    See God's salvation plan, wrought in love,
    Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,
    Christ is risen from the dead!

    See Mary weeping: 'Where is He laid?
    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;
    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name:
    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!
    The voice that spans the years,
    Speaking life, stirring hope,
    Bringing peace to us,
    Will sound till He appears,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!

    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,
    Through the Spirit
    Who clothes faith with certainty,
    Honour and blessing, glory and praise
    To the King crowned
    With power and authority!
    And we are raised with Him,
    Death is dead, love has won
    Christ has conquered;
    And we shall reign with Him,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!


    Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

    Copyright ©
    2003
    Thankyou Music     – See more at: http://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/see-what-a-morning/#sthash.MqYmBmvz.dpuf

    See what a morning, gloriously bright
    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
    Folded the grave-clothes
    Tomb filled with light,
    As the angels announce Christ is risen!
    See God's salvation plan, wrought in love,
    Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,
    Christ is risen from the dead!

    See Mary weeping: 'Where is He laid?
    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;
    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name:
    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!
    The voice that spans the years,
    Speaking life, stirring hope,
    Bringing peace to us,
    Will sound till He appears,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!

    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,
    Through the Spirit
    Who clothes faith with certainty,
    Honour and blessing, glory and praise
    To the King crowned
    With power and authority!
    And we are raised with Him,
    Death is dead, love has won
    Christ has conquered;
    And we shall reign with Him,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!


    Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

    Copyright ©
    2003
    Thankyou Music     – See more at: http://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/see-what-a-morning/#sthash.MqYmBmvz.dpuf

    See what a morning, gloriously bright
    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
    Folded the grave-clothes
    Tomb filled with light,
    As the angels announce Christ is risen!
    See God's salvation plan, wrought in love,
    Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,
    Christ is risen from the dead!

    See Mary weeping: 'Where is He laid?
    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;
    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name:
    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!
    The voice that spans the years,
    Speaking life, stirring hope,
    Bringing peace to us,
    Will sound till He appears,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!

    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,
    Through the Spirit
    Who clothes faith with certainty,
    Honour and blessing, glory and praise
    To the King crowned
    With power and authority!
    And we are raised with Him,
    Death is dead, love has won
    Christ has conquered;
    And we shall reign with Him,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!


    Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

    Copyright ©
    2003
    Thankyou Music     – See more at: http://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/see-what-a-morning/#sthash.MqYmBmvz.dpuf

    See what a morning, gloriously bright
    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
    Folded the grave-clothes
    Tomb filled with light,
    As the angels announce Christ is risen!
    See God's salvation plan, wrought in love,
    Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,
    Christ is risen from the dead!

    See Mary weeping: 'Where is He laid?
    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;
    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name:
    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!
    The voice that spans the years,
    Speaking life, stirring hope,
    Bringing peace to us,
    Will sound till He appears,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!

    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,
    Through the Spirit
    Who clothes faith with certainty,
    Honour and blessing, glory and praise
    To the King crowned
    With power and authority!
    And we are raised with Him,
    Death is dead, love has won
    Christ has conquered;
    And we shall reign with Him,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!


    Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

    Copyright ©
    2003
    Thankyou Music     – See more at: http://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/see-what-a-morning/#sthash.MqYmBmvz.dpuf

    See what a morning, gloriously bright
    With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
    Folded the grave-clothes
    Tomb filled with light,
    As the angels announce Christ is risen!
    See God's salvation plan, wrought in love,
    Borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
    Fulfilled in Christ, the Man, for He lives,
    Christ is risen from the dead!

    See Mary weeping: 'Where is He laid?
    As in sorrow she turns from the empty tomb;
    Hears a voice speaking, calling her name:
    It's the Master, the Lord raised to life again!
    The voice that spans the years,
    Speaking life, stirring hope,
    Bringing peace to us,
    Will sound till He appears,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!

    One with the Father, Ancient of Days,
    Through the Spirit
    Who clothes faith with certainty,
    Honour and blessing, glory and praise
    To the King crowned
    With power and authority!
    And we are raised with Him,
    Death is dead, love has won
    Christ has conquered;
    And we shall reign with Him,
    For He lives, Christ is risen from the dead!


    Stuart Townend & Keith Getty

    Copyright ©
    2003
    Thankyou Music     – See more at: http://www.stuarttownend.co.uk/song/see-what-a-morning/#sthash.MqYmBmvz.dpuf

  • This too is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it….


    DSC01433 (1)So been up on Schiehallion and spent a wonderful day enjoying scenery, making the long trek up (enjoying is a misleading word here – satisfying, healthy, aerobically effective) – I may walk rather differently tomorrow!

    Encountered a couple of mountain hare showing off their moves in the rocks, saw a timid ptarmigan spooked by the crunch of our boots, meadow pipits larking around, a skylark whose song is my favourite bird song ever. Forget Classic FM's obsession with Lark ascending; the real thing is sublime and unimprovable.

    Earlier we met a noisy in your face jay behaving like a bad tempered I'm a celebrity get out of here, or a postmodern ned, and later a red legged partridge with 15 chicks moving along the path ahead of us! She is a wonderful mother – one of the chicks had fallen off the path and couldn't get up – I caught it gently and lifted it up beside its siblings, and the mother was right over at me, outraged at the criticism of her parenting skills. 

    What a great day.


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  • Schiehallion from the Sun Lounge Window

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    The Pilgrm Psalm 121 has always raised my spirits by lifting my eyes. And when it comes to lifting my eyes to the hills, Schiehallion is about as impressive as they come. I've seen it in snow, a glistening majestic peak clothed in ermine with the occasional rocky outcrop showing; I've seen it in autumn with the colours muted and warm; and I've seen it at sunset in the afterglow of a summer day. Today I saw it from the window of the place we are staying. I lift my eyes to the hills. From whence doth my help come. Statement or question, the answer is the same – the Lord who made haven and earth.