Look to the hills

I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:1-2)

Look to the hills

I suppose it was natural for those in earlier times to look at the rocky heights and crags of mountains and think of God. Who, after all, could create that which dwarfs mere humans? Their Creator must be greater still.

Feeling small before such immensity awakens a silent knowing of the wonder and gift of being alive, witnesses to an earth more beautiful and inspiring than anything human ingenuity can create. 

Everything … even the hard stuff … begins to feel like a gift from a Giver beyond our capacity to imagine or understand.

Why is there anything at all, we ask, and why … this? And why am I moved to such love for what my senses strain to take in?

Perhaps this wonder, this love is what the Great Giver had in mind all along. Perhaps this love and wonder is who this Mystery is.

Just so, ancient and modern hearts begin to hope that the One who fashions every stony crag through untold millennia actually loves and cares for their little lives.

But however well God etches the divine name on mountain tops, the heart of God comes most clear on a hill a bit less high where a man hung on a cross, forgiving his enemies and surrendering to the mysterious Love he called “Father.”

Golgotha is the name of that hill where Jesus gave himself for the love of a broken world … and our broken hearts … that we may look to the hills and smile. No long wondering, but knowing … what the mountains only whisper.

Pr. David L. Miller