This is one of my favourite hills, Clachnaben. It's visible on the skyline from our street, and from the route I take when running / walking. Living where we do I've become more and more attached to Psalm 121 and that first verse, "I lift up my eyes to the hills, where shall I find help?" (REB)
That question goes to the very core of faith when life gets dangerous, scary or in our modern discourse of positivity, 'challenging'. I'm suspicious of that sleight of word habit, by which a problem is redescribed as a challenge, and a setback is always to be thought of as an opportunity. No doubt every problem and setback is also an opportunity, though recognising it, and taking it, might be a bit of a challenge when you're scared, stressed or just not sure how to deal with stuff.
Psalm 121 isn't written for those whose first instinct is to think positive. It's for those whose negativity kicks in when the journey gets hard, strength is depleted and aloneness presses in. "My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth", is the answer to his own question.
In the older Scottish version,
"I to the hills will lift mine eyes;
from whence doth come mine aid?
My safety cometh from the Lord,
who heaven and earth hath made."
One of the greatest achievements of Scottish worship is the Psalms and Paraphrases. The poetics are sometimes forced, but there is no concession to our current love affair with positivity. A problem is a problem, a worry is a worry, fear is real and the valley of deep darkness isn't a crisis to be managed but a real place to travel through.
"Yea though I walk through death's dark vale,
yet will I fear none ill;
for thou art with me, and thy rod,
and staff me comfort still."
See what I mean about the poetic idiosyncracies in what is one of the masterpieces of experiential faith rendered into a nation's language and idiom. So when I'm out running, or walking, I look to the hills. Where I stay there's no option, they are part of the horizon. Psalm 121 is a pilgrim psalm, probably sung responsively on arrival at Jerusalem after the dangerous journey over mountains, through deserts, across ravines and all the time the threat of bandits. This Psalm is sung after safe arrival - I suspect it was sung on the way too. When we pass through ominous terrain, the Lord is endlessly vigilant; when we walk through dark ravines the same Lord is with us as protective shepherd to comfort and strengthen.
Trust is not the same as positivity; trust is dependence on grace beyond our strength. Mere positivity on the other hand is, at worst, a form of denial that trouble is real, and at best, a form of self-reliance that if taken too far becomes practical atheism; which is to live as if God is not our Helper and Companion through the dark places. Those dark places are still shadowy, menacing and ominous, however much we rephrase those experiences as challenge, opportunity or "it is what it is". The person of faith knows all of that, and has learned to trust the createdness of the world and the goodness and mercy of the Creator, even in the presence of our enemies, and all else that is a harbinger of harm.
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