I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—a
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
John 16:33: “I have told you these
things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.
But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
1 Thessalonians 5:18: Give thanks in all
circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
Romans 12:15: Rejoice with those who
rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
John 11:25-26: Jesus said to her, “I
am the resurrection and the life.The one who believes will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
As many
of you know by now Susan and I have three daughters: Rebecca, Sarah-Grace and
Heather. Rebecca is 17 and she is working at Camp Sunrise for the summer and
most of you have met Heather and Sarah-Grace who are here today. Sarah-Grace
even had the opportunity to volunteer at the Thrift Store this week.
Susan and
I are both originally from the Island. Susan is from Port Alberni here and I am
from Victoria. We have served God in The Salvation Army in Victoria, in Vancouver’s
downtown eastside (North America’s poorest postal code), in Winnipeg’s North
End and Stony Mountain Penitentiary (one of Canada’s oldest penitentiaries, the
prisoners from Louis Riel’s Northwest rebellion were confined there); we served
in Nipawin and Tisdale in North East Saskatchewan and Swift Current in
Southwest Saskatchewan – this is where Heather was born – we were blessed to be
able to start both a court worker program and a hospital chaplaincy program
there. The last few years we have been serving in Cabbagetown and Regent Park
in Toronto: Regent Park was North America’s first housing project. We have
moved around quite a bit; so grandma, my mom, offered that if there was
anything in Toronto that the kids and we wanted to see or do before we left Toronto,
if there was anything at all that we would regret having lived in Toronto and
not having seen or done that she would pay for it as a birthday present.
June 9th
was Sarah-Grace’s 16th birthday and when we asked her what she
always wanted to do, that we could do for her birthday, she said she wanted to
go on an ‘Edgewalk’ on the CN Tower. Do you know what that is? Let me tell you.
You know that the CN Tower was the world's tallest building and what the
Edgewalk is, is you go above the nicely enclosed observation decks at
the top of the CN Tower and you climb outside on a ledge of the CN tower
without any railing, enclosure or anything and you walk around the edge of the
world’s once tallest building. And so we walked around the top of it, outside,
without a guard rail, without glass or any enclosure; more than a thousand feet
in the air.
The path
we were walking on outside the building almost two thousand feet in the air was
only the typical width of a normal sidewalk. It was quite something. We
circumnavigated the building; we leaned over the edge, and looked down on the
city so far below. (There was a Blue Jays game on right beneath us and we were
so far up that the Blue Jays looked smaller than very tiny ants).
We were,
of course, attached by a harness and ropes. This was good because sometime
people slip. I was chatting with one of the guides after our walk and he
acknowledged that he has slipped more than once and that in that second before
the ropes hold him secure, his heart beats a lot faster, as his instincts brace
him for that fatal fall. Praise the Lord for the rope. Nonetheless in that
quick moment it is more than little bit scary. And, of course, as we and others
are suiting up and getting ready to walk out on that ledge for the very first
time more than a thousand feet in the air, it can be more than a little bit
scary. You don’t want your foot to slip. Immediately I thought of Psalm 121:3
as it says, ‘He [God] will not let your foot slip.’
Psalm 121
was probably written as people approached a pretty scary situation themselves. Some
scholars think that Psalm 121 was originally been written as a pre-battle
psalm.[1] It may have been written
as people were heading off to fight, some of them to certain death, others to
injury but all of them seeking God’s protection. Others have suggested that it
was originally a travelers’ hymn that they would sing as they were heading to
Jerusalem. They were concerned about the mountains and the bandits that may
reside there (Verse 1).[2] They were concerned about
the sun and the moon affecting them on their journey (Verse 6). The sun: of
course, we are always vulnerable to heatstroke, etc. The threat of the moon:
some people suggest that this refers to something as simple as some of the
scary things that happen at night. The moon can be scary: did you know that the
word ‘lunatic’ comes from the Latin word for moon and that the word
‘moonstruck’, translates to the original Greek as ‘epileptic’? [3] The person who originally
wrote this psalm had some serious concerns about troubles.
As well
as Psalm 121, we read from the Gospels, Thessalonians and Philippians today.
The circumstances that the Christians in the early church, who read and wrote
these letters, faced were certainly dangerous. We know that according to tradition,
all except one of the disciples, John, was martyred. (And not for lack of zeal:
tradition says that he was boiled alive but that the Lord protected him so that
he wasn’t even hurt!) Paul himself spent much of his time in prison and
actually when he wrote the letter to the Philippians the conditions of his
incarceration had significantly worsened and we know that his time of incarceration
only ended with his execution.
These were difficult times. I am sure that
they – both the apostles and the psalmist - felt at times the same feeling as
if they were leaning over the edge of the world’s tallest building and staring
at the streets below of our nation’s largest city. I am sure they may have felt
sometimes as if their footing was giving away and they were about to fall. That
is what Verse 3 of our text is concerned about.
How about
us do we ever get to that point where we feel that we are about to fall in
life? Do we sometimes feel like our footing is tentative? Do we ever lose our
footing and slip? We have friends from our time recently in Toronto (as well as
the other communities in which we have served) who have struggled with
addiction or other such things. We have on friend who really struggled with an
addiction to Crack Cocaine. Addiction to one thing or another is a ledge that
many people walk along. Our friend was doing so well for so long. He was
relying of the Lord’s help like it was the support ropes that hold us in place
when we walk along the ledge. Zeal, energy, and life came back into him. He was
gaining weight and actively participating in the life of the corps and ministry…and
then one day we saw him on the street corner begging for money again to feed
his addiction; he slipped. Many of us who have some history of addiction have
sometimes slipped from the safety of that ledge into our addictions.
What are
some other things that threaten our safety? There actual physical slips where
we fall and break, sprain, or hurt something and so need to put so much of our
life on hold. These aren’t so fun. There are unexpected illnesses too: since
just before Christmas, in our previous appointment in Toronto we lost both our
finance person and our former CSM to cancer. Both of them had children and one
of them was a single mom from a foreign country. There are things that threaten
us today. Health is a big one: I was speaking with one lady at our food bank
here (Diana) whose very young grandchild has been admitted to hospital because
she had a fever and won’t eat and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. (They
do now!) There are other scary things that make us vulnerable too: there is
sudden unemployment. There are financial threats. There are rifts in community
and many scary things in this world. Even just the simple scary things like
moving to a new town or getting new Salvation Army Officers! Our psalm today
was written by someone who was facing a scary situation and looking for comfort
and strength in the Lord.
Jesus
really does love us and he is here for us. Tough times do come. The sun is hot.
The night can be dark. The mountains can be daunting and we can lose our
balance. Not everything always seems to work out. I have one more true story to
share in our time today.
Then they went to the plane. Flipping a coin to see who would go first, the friend lost and was supposed to jump first. Discovering, however, at about 850 ft in the air that he was afraid of heights, he convinced his companion to jump first.
They were jumping from 3000 ft. As this was their first jump, cords were tied to their parachutes so that they would open automatically upon exiting the plane because you never know if someone new will be able to pull the cord to release the parachute or not. The companion climbed out on the wing (as he was supposed to) jumped, counted to five (as they practiced), looked up saw that the parachute had opened beautifully and enjoyed one of the most peaceful experiences of his life noticing the miracles of God’s creation while drifting to the ground on this perfectly windless day.
The friend, emboldened, does the same: climbs onto the wing, jumps, counts and looks to see the parachute; he reaches to grab the steering toggles on his parachute…they aren’t there. His parachute isn’t there (most of it anyway). It isn’t working. He has to take it off his back and pull the emergency chute all the while following faster and faster towards the ground. As he pulls the cord, he prays: “Lord, please save me.” He pulls the cord, looks, and the emergency chute didn’t open properly either. It isn’t catching any wind. It isn’t slowing him down. He falls beneath the trees towards the power lines and highway below…
It is at
this time that the Lord’s hand reaches out in the wind and actually lifts the
parachutist up in the air, opens his parachute and gently sets him on the
ground without a scratch. This is a true story; I am that parachutist
The
Lord’s hand reaches out in the winds of our life too. He is a God of miracles
and he has saved us. Even when life is tough and even as we do struggle He loves
us and He will keep us. In the short passage we read in the psalms, the
psalmist encourages us with that no less than six times: in our troubles, the
Lord will keep us.[4]
Jesus says, John
11:25-26: … The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and
whoever lives by believing in me will never die… Philippians 1:21: For to me,
to live is Christ and to die is gain. John 16:33: “I have told you these
things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble.
But take heart! I have overcome the world” for, Psalm 121:8, “the Lord will
watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”
The Lord
is our opening parachute and our rope in life. Our life is like a walk around
the world's tallest building. Even the most experienced, skilled, and talented
of us can stumble in this life. We can be tripped up by circumstances and
events. Things happen to all and any of us. However, as those of us know who put
our trust in the Lord, He is our salvation. He can pull us back up to the
walkway and He will keep us in the midst of anything and everything we face in
this life: as the scriptures assure us, even if we die, yet shall we live. God
loves us and God keeps us, So whatever edges we are walking along and whatever our
troubles may be in this life, I encourage us to trust in the Lord. He is our
salvation.
Let us
pray
Sermons: www.sheepspeak.com
Devotional Thoughts: https://salvogesis.blogspot.com
---
[1] James
H. Evans, Jr., Feasting on the Word Commentary
Year A Volume 2: Exegetical Perspective.
[2] Willem
A. VanGemeren in The Expositor's Bible
Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Psalms/Exposition of Psalms/BOOK V: Psalms
107-150/Psalm 121: Yahweh Is My Guardian/I. Yahweh Is the Creator (121:1-2),
Book Version: 4.0.2
[3] J
CLINTON MCCANN JR, Feasting on the Word Commentary
Year A Volume 2: Exegetical Perspective.
[4] ROBERT
E FISHER, Feasting on the Word Commentary
Year A Volume 2: Pastoral Perspective.
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