{"id":4380,"date":"2026-03-01T21:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2026\/03\/01\/lifting-eyes-to-the-hills-based-on-psalm-121-and\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T14:08:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:08:55","slug":"lifting-eyes-to-the-hills-based-on-psalm-121-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2026\/03\/01\/lifting-eyes-to-the-hills-based-on-psalm-121-and\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifting Eyes to the Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLifting Eyes to the Hills\u201d based on Psalm 121 and Preface to Social Principles \u201cCommunity of All Creation\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

I am told that the Ancient Israelite temples were creation themed. I love that. I love how it connects our faith tradition to other traditions that were and are more earth based. I think about a tour I once took of a cathedral in Ecuador where the tour guide pointed out places the builders of the cathedral snuck in their own faith symbolism. The people doing the actual building had not been building of their own free will, and they\u2019d not been converted to the faith that forced their labor. The symbols they added, though, were symbols of Mother-earth. And it is interestingly full circle that the \u201cinserted\u201d symbols were also a part the ancient Temples that pre-date our Christian tradition.<\/p>\n

I also love that the Temple was creation themed because I think my own faith is creation themed and I like reminders that my faith is a valid expression of a long standing tradition \u2013 since sometimes I get messages that I\u2019m too far out of the norm to count. Knowing God as Loving Creator is the foundation of my understanding of the Divine. Seeing glimpses of God in creation is a constant affirmation of my faith itself. Gleaning wisdom from creation has always been at least as important to me as gleaning wisdom from ancient patriarchal texts (the Bible, I\u2019m talking about the Bible \u2013 I love it and struggle with it).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always read Psalm 121 and resonated with \u201cI lift my eyes to the hills \u2013 from where will my help come?\u201d I\u2019ve done that. A lot. When I\u2019m driving on the interstates or country roads, I\u2019m pretty constantly lifting my eyes to the hills and soaking in their beauty and wisdom. They speak to me of God. This is for me a comforting Psalm, a reminder of the ways that Creation speak truths to our souls, an affirmation that God is with us, a reassurance that all will be well.<\/p>\n

Which means, if I\u2019m honest, that I love it and savor it and inherently distrust it. Because, dear ones, not all is well and not all has EVER been well. This fact doesn\u2019t even require keeping up to date on the news. So I looked this Psalm up in the Word Biblical Commentary and discovered some new ideas. The first is that there is significant debate if the opening line reads the way I always read it, \u201cI lift my eyes up to the hills \u2013 this beautiful piece of creation that soothes my soul \u2013 from where will my help come? From the God of creation of course!\u201d OR if it means something more like \u201cI lift my eyes to the hills \u2013 those mountains I must climb, where dangers abound in my path, from where will my help come in having to traverse them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well then, I\u2019d always missed THAT possibility. But, its valid. And in both cases the answer is the same \u201cMy help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.\u201d Which is kinda great, that whether the hills are soothing or terrifying, the answer is that the God of Creation is with us.<\/p>\n

The commentary suggests that in this Psalm the speaker has been at a Temple festival, and has been fed by being in that worshipful place and experience. The festival is ending, and the Psalmist is trying to find a way to live out the wonder of the Temple experience in day to day life. I can\u2019t quite tell why they assume all this is true, but neither can I find a reason to disagree with it, so I\u2019m going with it. The question of the Psalm then is how to trust in God in the day to day, and the Psalmist expresses convictions of how trustworthy God is. That said, I feel like the Psalmist goes overboard. The commentary explains, \u201cLife is full of dangers, but Yahweh\u2019s help is a match for them all. \u2026 In practical terms life cushioned from all unpleasantness was never the lot of the Israelite\u2026 but believers in any age hear this message deep in their hearts and are encouraged thereby to bear the heat and burden of the day and to sleep with contentment.\u201d1<\/a><\/p>\n

By the end of that, I hear the famous words of Julian of Norwich, \u201cAnd all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.\u201d Julian found those words after decades of prayerful consideration of a single deathbed vision. They come out of pain, fear, and isolation to speak to the truth under it all.<\/p>\n

Beloveds, there are all kinds of things that are not well. We could spend days making the lists of what is not well. Hmm, maybe months?<\/p>\n

And at the same time, God is with us all. They\u2019re both true. The worst things happening in the world, God is with the people experiencing them. They are not alone. Even more so, God is at work to care for God\u2019s people, all of them, all the time. But quite often people get in God\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

God may be trying to shade us from the sun, but sometimes people cut down the trees! God has created plenty for us to eat, but we don\u2019t distribute it well. God wants full and abundant lives for all of us and sometimes we humans drop bombs and missiles on people.<\/p>\n

And STILL God is with us all.<\/p>\n

God, the creator, dreams good dreams for us where we share in the abundance of God\u2019s resources and take loving care of each other. And, in the meantime, in this world we live in, our help comes from God, who made heaven and earth.<\/p>\n

Thanks be to God who is always with us. Amen<\/p>\n

1<\/a>Leslie Allen, Word Biblical Commentary Psalms 101-<\/i>150, ed. Bruce M. Metzger et al (USA: Zondervan, 2002), p. 154<\/p>\n

Rev. Sara E. Baron\u00a0
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady\u00a0
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305\u00a0
Pronouns: she\/her\/hers\u00a0
http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/\u00a0<\/a>
https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n

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March 1, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLifting Eyes to the Hills\u201d based on Psalm 121 and Preface to Social Principles \u201cCommunity of All Creation\u201d I am … Continue reading Lifting Eyes to the Hills<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34,38,28,39,33,23,1265,1275,405,1276,214,56],"class_list":["post-4380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-fumc-schenectady","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-rev-sara-e-baron","tag-thinking-church","tag-umc","tag-creation","tag-first-umc-schenectady","tag-havent-found-words-about-iran-yet","tag-hope","tag-i-lift-my-eyes-to-the-hills","tag-lent","tag-schenectady"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4605,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions\/4605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}