I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
Psalm 121:1-2 (ESV)Augustine, *Expositions on the Psalms*:
"The Psalmist lifts up his eyes to the hills, because from them he awaits help. But he corrects himself at once: not from the hills, but from the Lord who made the hills. What are the hills? The great ones of this world, the powers and principalities. The soul in distress looks to them first -- but the holy soul looks past them, and finds the Maker instead of the made. That is the motion of faith: to look through the creature to the Creator, and to rest there."
Ambrose of Milan, *On the Mysteries*:
"When the soul turns its gaze upward, it does not merely scan the horizon. It looks for the face behind the light, the hand behind the mountain. To ask 'from where does my help come' is already to have begun the journey. The very question is a refusal to accept that what is visible is all there is. And the answer -- 'the Lord who made heaven and earth' -- reorders everything. If He made all of this, then whatever threatens you is already within the bounds of His dominion."
Jerome, *Letter to Heliodorus* (c. 374 AD):
"How often, when I was living in the desert, in that vast solitude which is scorched by the sun and affords a wild dwelling to monks, how often did I fancy myself surrounded by the pleasures of Rome! I sat alone, for I was full of bitterness. My unkempt limbs were covered in shapeless sackcloth; my skin from long neglect had become like the hide of an Ethiopian. There in that sun-scorched vastness, where no water is, I wept daily and groaned, and when sleep overcame me against my will, I dashed to the ground my bones that scarce held together. But my help came from the Lord. I, who for fear of hell had consigned myself to that prison, companion of scorpions and wild beasts, often found myself surrounded by bands of dancing girls. My face was pale with fasting, but my mind was inflamed with desire. So I threw myself at the feet of Jesus, watering them with my tears and wiping them with my hair."
Oswald Chambers, *My Utmost for His Highest*:
"There is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. We have to learn to do that in all the ordinary things of life -- in meals, in sleep, in work, in everything. Jesus Christ was not a recluse. He did not cut Himself off from society; He did not denounce social life. His life was lived in the most crowded, common circumstances of a carpenter's shop and a village street. We get into a panic that if we don't spend a certain amount of time in prayer and Bible study we will never get anywhere. Get anywhere? The aim is to dwell where we have been placed. The primary discipline is not isolation from life but abiding through life -- lifting up the eyes not to the hills of some retreat, but to the Lord in the middle of the demands."
What would change if you looked past the hills -- past the obstacles, the powers, the systems -- and asked for help from the One who made them, not the ones who sit on them?
Cato the Younger, as recorded by Seneca in *On Providence*:
"Seneca reports that when Cato saw the Republic collapsing and Pompey's camp falling to Caesar, he refused to endure the humiliation of surrendering to a tyrant. After reading Plato's *Phaedo* -- the dialogue on the immortality of the soul -- he took his own life not in despair but in protest. His final words, as Seneca preserves them: 'Fortune, you have no power over Cato's character. The tyrant's hands may take my body, but my principles are not subject to the sword.' The Stoics held Cato as their exemplar of the sovereign soul -- the man who would rather die upright than live on his knees."
St. Clair, Michigan
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