I Lift My Eyes Up to the Mountains
I’d like to start at the beginning, in the beginning, God created the world and God saw that it was good. Seven times it is written, God speaks the world into existence and observes that it is good.
We are created in God’s image, and we find marvel and awe in the rest of His creation. We wonder and gaze at the stars, valleys, mountains, the entirety of nature, and we say: it is so very good. There’s something special about connecting with nature. Studies continually show that this relationship and the act of our connecting with the nature, literally changes our brain chemistry and composition. Maybe because we feel closer to our Creator. Indigenous peoples have long remembered and revered the land as teacher and provider and have maintained the knowledge that everything is connected. We are entangled in this world, and we hold a reciprocal relationship with both the seen and the unseen in it.
In the opening of this Psalm, the singer first lifts his eyes to the mountains. As a Vancouverite, I have always imagined this as lifting our eyes to the mountains quite literally, the majestic hills rising in front of us, framing the ocean view. Mountains as a reflection of my God that I cannot see face to face. But the Psalmist goes on, where does our help come from? Not just this reflection of God, but from God Herself. My firm foundation is like a mountain, but my firm foundation is in fact, God, beginning, middle and end, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Creator of all, the first lover of nature and our beloved world.
Our God will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD will watch over our comings and goings both now and forevermore. What a blessing! I will continue to lift my eyes to the mountains and think of a God who has created such majesty, but in my time of need, I will pray to the life source, the life giver, the life maker. And maybe, maybe our first step in a time of need, is to lift our eyes up and away from our own self, look up at the mountains and remember this reflection of God, as a reminder of the God who created the world, and declared that it was good.
God, grant us the ability to gaze upward in awe as we remember that you hold this world in your hands, now and always. Amen.
Robin Anderson