Psalm Meditation 1128 ¶Fourth Sunday After Epiphany ¶January 30, 2022 ¶Psalm 125 1 Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. 2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time on and forevermore. 3 For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, so that the righteous might not stretch out their hands to do wrong. 4 Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts. 5 But those who turn aside to their own crooked ways the Lord will lead away with evildoers. Peace be upon Israel! (NRSV) ¶When we think about mountains we concentrate on their strength, majesty, and seeming permanence. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how those mountains came to be. We don’t think about the stresses and pressure that have been applied to bring a mountain into being. Maybe God decided a mountain belonged right there and suddenly it appeared out of nothing. Even then the mountain is made of levels and layers that bear and produce tons of force on each other that hold it together and push it apart. ¶The psalmist’s view of mountains is from the outside. All we usually see of a mountain is that strength and permanence. We may be lucky enough to know someone who stands firm against all the temptations that assail a person in a lifetime, the one who can always call on some source of calm and strength in time of need however great or small that need may be. They can be intimidating to those of us who see ourselves as mere foothills on our best days. Their roots and resources seem so much deeper than ours and they are the ones we call on when our strength is spent. ¶The truth is, those people are filled with their own struggles and burdens. Not that they see us as an additional burden when we approach them. Quite the contrary; helping us helps them in their own struggles as they find new perspective by offering themselves to us. Each time we weather a storm, we find new strength, new connections, new roots. As we are able to step back from ourselves to see a broader view we may see that there are folks who see us as the mountain to which their foothills lead. We see our inner strains and struggles, those who look to us for strength and connection see our constancy, perseverance, and faithfulness ¶January 24, 2022 ¶LCM