“I look to the hills for my help, and from where does my help
come. My help only comes from the maker of heaven and the maker of the earth.”
There is gold in the first
verse of Psalm 121.
It sets up the remaining seven.
It sets up the remaining seven.
When we lift up our eyes to the hills, what are
we doing? We are looking to where we expect our help to come.
Our faith is not focused on many extraneous
sources.
We look because we have need. We search because
we’re impelled to.
The psalmist looks to the hills because their
eye is trained on 1) what they’ve come to learn as the only source of help,
because 2) Yahweh is the only source
of help.
The psalmist has learnt the most valuable
lesson any of us can learn in our lives.
They have learned to look up because they came
to a place when nothing else worked, and finally they decided it would cost
them no more and may actually work to trust the Lord.
So, they didn’t look to the right or to the left, or head down
or even straight ahead.
They chose to look up and to
trust God for their help.
The most valuable lesson of life overall is the lesson of trust.
Where we place our trust says a lot about who we are and what we
believe in. What and how we trust indicates whether we are wise or foolish. If
we trust only the trustworthy, although it seems ridiculous to the worldly
person, we ultimately trust what makes us wise, but we’re hardly ever
vindicated straight away!
It’s why true wisdom is fully born in faith. It’s because the
truth tarries — the Biblical principle of Matthew 11:19; in Jesus’ own words, “… wisdom is justified by what takes place as a consequence.”
This first verse in Psalm 121 sets up the remainder
of the psalm. If we are wise enough to reject the overtures of the world, and
in myriad form those temptations come, and instead look to the hills (which is
code for: look up to God alone) we
will find the help we desperately seek.
How or why? When we reconcile that God alone
can help, we endure the moment of brokenness, accepting the pain of bearing a
life we cannot control, of bearing with intrinsic discomfort, with annoyance
and frustration, with catapulting sorrow, with feelings we do not like and with
affections we cannot change.
And yet, out of this comes a place of peace and the source of
hope and the position of destiny. God’s help is found right there!
No comments:
Post a Comment