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.
There was a fellow who decided to go parachuting with his friend. As neither of them had ever been parachuting before they needed to be trained. They spent the day at the airport studying wind trajectories, physics, the speed of acceleration of a free falling object, as well as what to do if your parachute fails to open. The one friend did not understand it at all and even when they practiced with a mock parachute, he didn’t get it. He couldn’t even get the mock parachute to work. He didn’t get it.
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.
---
[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.
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.
There was a fellow who decided to go parachuting with his friend. As neither of them had ever been parachuting before they needed to be trained. They spent the day at the airport studying wind trajectories, physics, the speed of acceleration of a free falling object, as well as what to do if your parachute fails to open. The one friend did not understand it at all and even when they practiced with a mock parachute, he didn’t get it. He couldn’t even get the mock parachute to work. He didn’t get it.
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.
[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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