Pilgrim Facing the Mountains

 Photo by Jack Schuessler,  Zion National Park - Utah, Fall, 2011

If you do a New Testament word search of "mountain" or "hill"  you will see Jesus in  many such high places and that  he often spoke of them.  He lived and prayed among the hills and mountains, and probably this Psalm 121 was often on his mind.  When Satan took Jesus "to a very high mountain" (Matt 4:8) I picture Jesus praying the eight verses of this Psalm to protect him from the danger that he was facing.

  A Song of Ascents. 
[1] I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From whence does my help come?
[2] My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
[3] He will not let your foot be moved,
he who keeps you will not slumber.
[4] Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
[5] The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade
on your right hand.
[6] The sun shall not smite you by day,
nor the moon by night.
[7] The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
[8] The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and for evermore.

Ps. 121  (RSV)

Fr. David M. Stanley S.J. is his book, A Modern Scriptural Approach to the Spiritual Exercises (The Institute of Jesuit Sources 1967) , at chapter 3 titled "The Prayer of the Creature," has a meditation on this Psalm 121  which could change your life, if God seems far away from you now.   Stanley says that this is a Psalm from a layman pilgrim leaving Jerusalem, who now "turns his face toward his homeward journey."  Page 35.   Yes, the mountains are stunning reminders of God's creation, which the Psalmist recognizes here.   But east of Jerusalem they were also a dangerous place, harboring bandits,  as they were in Jesus' time as well.  Stanley cites Luke 10:30-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan, as an example.

 The pilgrim in Ps. 121  realizes that he faces danger, and this Psalm is the reply of the priest to "reassure the doubtful pilgrim." A Modern Scriptural Approach to the Spiritual Exercises,   Page 36.   

God who made heaven and earth "will not permit your foot to slip."  Page 36 (Fr. Stanley's translation of verse 3).  Here are two great and contrasting thoughts.  He made the universe, but his concern is for this individual pilgrim.

The creation account in Genesis explains how  the world "came to be" but more importantly it reminds God's people of the creator's plans for his people.  Page 36.   Fr. Stanley comments on how the Psalm moves from thoughts of the people of Israel to concern for this individual Israelite, where he says: 

This God, the God of Israel, deploys his creative power in saving, protecting, watching over the people he has made.  We moderns tend to think of the account of the creation in the beginning of the Bible simply as a kind of revealed cosmogony.  Such indeed it is.  But we should not forget that these pages were written not merely to explain how the world came to be, but chiefly to remind Isreal that the first and greatest of God’s saving acts – his “judgments” as they are called, his acts of redemption – was the creation of the universe for his future people.  …

And so here the priest reminds the pilgrim that God will look after him personally, because the God of Israel, the God who made a covenant with his people, is interested in him as an individual.  “Yahweh is your guardian, your shade.”   The power, the suggestiveness of this symbol of shade in a world like that of the Mediterranean is a very powerful one.  “Yahweh at your right hand.”  God is so interested in the pilgrim that he will stand at that side on which he is most vulnerable.  Yahweh protects the individual Israelite to the very least and the most important detail.

Page 36 (italics in original).  I had read Ps. 121 many times, but after gaining  the benefit of these insights from Fr. Stanley,  meditation on this Psalm now becomes a humbling and emotional experience.