Help from the Hills?

Excerpt from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Not What We Had Expected

The moment we say no to the world and yes to God, all our prob­lems are solved, all our ques­tions answered, all our trou­bles over. Noth­ing can dis­turb the tran­quil­i­ty of the soul at peace with God. Noth­ing can inter­fere with the blessed assur­ance that all is well between me and my Sav­ior. Noth­ing and no one can upset the enjoy­able rela­tion­ship that has been estab­lished by faith in Jesus Christ. We Chris­tians are among that priv­i­leged com­pa­ny of per­sons who don’t have acci­dents, who don’t have argu­ments with our spous­es, who aren’t mis­un­der­stood by our peers, whose chil­dren do not dis­obey us. 

If any of those things should hap­pen — a crush­ing doubt, a squall of anger, a des­per­ate lone­li­ness, an acci­dent that puts us in the hos­pi­tal, an argu­ment that puts us in the dog­house, a rebel­lion that puts us on the defen­sive, a mis­un­der­stand­ing that puts us in the wrong — it is a sign that some­thing is wrong with our rela­tion­ship with God. We have, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, retract­ed our yes to God; and God, impa­tient with our fick­le faith, has gone off to take care of some­one more deserv­ing of his attention. 

Is that what you believe? If it is, I have some incred­i­bly good news for you. You are wrong. 

To be told we are wrong is some­times an embar­rass­ment, even a humil­i­a­tion. We want to run and hide our heads in shame. But there are times when find­ing out we are wrong is sud­den and imme­di­ate relief, and we can lift up our heads in hope. No longer do we have to keep dogged­ly try­ing to do some­thing that isn’t working. 

A few years ago I was in my back­yard with my lawn­mow­er tipped on its side. I was try­ing to get the blade off so I could sharp­en it. I had my biggest wrench attached to the nut but couldn’t budge it. I got a four-foot length of pipe and slipped it over the wrench han­dle to give me lever­age, and I leaned on that — still unsuc­cess­ful­ly. Next I took a large rock and banged on the pipe. By this time I was begin­ning to get emo­tion­al­ly involved with my lawnmower. 

Then my neigh­bor walked over and said that he had a lawn­mow­er like mine once and that, if he remem­bered cor­rect­ly, the threads on the bolt went the oth­er way. I reversed my exer­tions and, sure enough, the nut turned eas­i­ly. I was glad to find out I was wrong. I was saved from frus­tra­tion and fail­ure. I would nev­er have got­ten the job done, no mat­ter how hard I tried, doing it my way. 

Psalm 121 is a qui­et voice gen­tly and kind­ly telling us that we are, per­haps, wrong in the way we are going about the Chris­t­ian life, and then, very sim­ply, show­ing us the right way. 

But no soon­er have we plunged, expec­tant­ly and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, into the riv­er of Chris­t­ian faith than we get our noses full of water and come up cough­ing and chok­ing. No soon­er do we con­fi­dent­ly stride out onto the road of faith than we trip on an obstruc­tion and fall to the hard sur­face, bruis­ing our knees and elbows. For many, the first great sur­prise of the Chris­t­ian life is in the form of trou­bles we meet. Some­how it is not what we had sup­posed: we had expect­ed some­thing quite dif­fer­ent; we had our minds set on Eden or on New Jerusalem. We are rude­ly awak­ened to some­thing very dif­fer­ent, and we look around for help, scan­ning the hori­zon for some­one who will give us aid: ​“I look up to the moun­tains; does my strength come from mountains?”

Psalm 121 is the neigh­bor com­ing over and telling us that we are doing it the wrong way, look­ing in the wrong place for help. Psalm 121 is addressed to those of us who, ​“dis­re­gard­ing God, gaze to a dis­tance all around them, and make long and devi­ous cir­cuits in quest of reme­dies to their trou­bles.”¹

Help from the Hills? 

A psalm that has enjoyed high regard among Chris­tians so long must have truth in it that is ver­i­fied in Chris­t­ian liv­ing. Let’s return to the psalm: The per­son set on the way of faith gets into trou­ble, looks around for help (“I look up to the moun­tains”) and asks a ques­tion: ​“Does my strength come from moun­tains?” As this per­son of faith looks around at the hills for help, what is he, what is she, going to see? 

Some mag­nif­i­cent scenery, for one thing. Is there any­thing more inspir­ing than a ridge of moun­tains sil­hou­et­ted against the sky? Does any part of this earth promise more in terms of majesty and strength, of firm­ness and solid­i­ty, than the moun­tains? But a Hebrew would see some­thing else. 

Dur­ing the time this psalm was writ­ten and sung, Pales­tine was over­run with pop­u­lar pagan wor­ship. Much of this reli­gion was prac­ticed on hill­tops. Shrines were set up, groves of trees were plant­ed, sacred pros­ti­tutes both male and female were pro­vid­ed; per­sons were lured to the shrines to engage in acts of wor­ship that would enhance the fer­til­i­ty of the land, would make you feel good, would pro­tect you from evil. There were nos­trums, pro­tec­tions, spells and enchant­ments against all the per­ils of the road. Do you fear the sun’s heat? Go to the sun priest and pay for pro­tec­tion against the sun god. Are you fear­ful of the malign influ­ence of moon­light? Go to the moon priest­ess and buy an amulet. Are you haunt­ed by the demons that can use any peb­ble under your foot to trip you? Go to the shrine and learn the mag­ic for­mu­la to ward off the mis­chief. Whence shall my help come? from Baal? from Asher­ah? from the sun priest? from the moon priest­ess?²

That is the kind of thing a Hebrew, set out on the way of faith twen­ty-five hun­dred years ago, would have seen on the hills. It is what dis­ci­ples still see. A per­son of faith encoun­ters tri­al or tribu­la­tion and cries out ​“Help!” We lift our eyes to the moun­tains, and offers of help, instant and numer­ous, appear. ​“Does my strength come from moun­tains?” No. ​“My strength comes from GOD, who made heav­en, and earth, and mountains.”

A look to the hills for help ends in dis­ap­point­ment. For all their majesty and beau­ty, for all their qui­et strength and firm­ness, they are final­ly just hills. And for all their promis­es of safe­ty against the per­ils of the road, for all the allure­ments of their priests and priest­esses, they are all, final­ly, lies. 

And so Psalm 121 says no. It rejects a wor­ship of nature, a reli­gion of stars and flow­ers, a reli­gion that makes the best of what it finds on the hills; instead it looks to the Lord who made heav­en and earth. Help comes from the Cre­ator, not from the creation.

The Cre­ator is Lord over time: he ​“guards you when you leave and when you return,” your begin­nings and your end­ings. He is with you when you set out on your way; he is still with you when you arrive at your des­ti­na­tion. You don’t need to, in the mean­time, get sup­ple­men­tary help from the sun or the moon. The Cre­ator is Lord over all nat­ur­al and super­nat­ur­al forces: he made them. Sun, moon and rocks have no spir­i­tu­al power. 

They are not able to inflict evil upon us: we need not fear any super­nat­ur­al assault from any of them. ​“GOD guards you from every evil.” The promise of the psalm — and both Hebrews and Chris­tians have always read it this way — is not that we shall nev­er stub our toes but that no injury, no ill­ness, no acci­dent, no dis­tress will have evil pow­er over us, that is, will be able to sep­a­rate us from God’s pur­pos­es in us.

No lit­er­a­ture is more real­is­tic and hon­est in fac­ing the harsh facts of life than the Bible. At no time is there the faintest sug­ges­tion that the life of faith exempts us from dif­fi­cul­ties. What it promis­es is preser­va­tion from all the evil in them. On every page of the Bible there is recog­ni­tion that faith encoun­ters troubles. 

The sixth peti­tion in the Lord’s Prayer is ​“Lead us not into temp­ta­tion, but deliv­er us from evil.” That prayer is answered every day, some­times many times a day, in the lives of those who walk in the way of faith. St. Paul wrote, ​“No test or temp­ta­tion that comes your way is beyond the course of what oth­ers have had to face. All you need to remem­ber is that God will nev­er let you down; he’ll nev­er let you be pushed past your lim­it; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” (1 Cor 10:13).

One God, One Gospel

The great dan­ger of Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship is that we should have two reli­gions: a glo­ri­ous, bib­li­cal Sun­day gospel that sets us free from the world, that in the cross and res­ur­rec­tion of Christ makes eter­ni­ty alive in us, a mag­nif­i­cent gospel of Gen­e­sis and Romans and Rev­e­la­tion; and, then, an every­day reli­gion that we make do with dur­ing the week between the time of leav­ing the world and arriv­ing in heaven. 

We save the Sun­day gospel for the big crises of exis­tence. For the mun­dane triv­i­al­i­ties — the times when our foot slips on a loose stone, or the heat of the sun gets too much for us, or the influ­ence of the moon gets us down — we use the every­day reli­gion of the Reader’s Digest reprint, advice from a friend, an Ann Lan­ders col­umn, the huck­stered wis­dom of a talk-show celebri­ty. We prac­tice patent-med­i­cine religion. 

We know that God cre­at­ed the uni­verse and has accom­plished our eter­nal sal­va­tion. But we can’t believe that he con­de­scends to watch the soap opera of our dai­ly tri­als and tribu­la­tions; so we pur­chase our own reme­dies for that. To ask him to deal with what trou­bles us each day is like ask­ing a famous sur­geon to put iodine on a scratch. 

But Psalm 121 says that the same faith that works in the big things works in the lit­tle things. The God of Gen­e­sis 1 who brought light out of dark­ness is also the God of this day who guards you from every evil.