Our help is from the Lord

Psalm 121: 1-8

Refrain: Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains: whence shall help come to me?
My help is the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

May he not suffer your foot to slip; may he slumber not who guards you.
Indeed he neither slumbers nor sleeps, the guardian of Israel.

The Lord is your guardian; the Lord is your shade;
The sun shall not harm you by day, not the moon by night.

The Lord will guard you from all evil; he will guard your life.
The Lord will guard your coming and your going both now and forever.

Isn't amazing how much we are loved? God far from being out to get us is our very guardian, he is our shade from the heat of life, a cool place to rest and refresh ourselves for the ongoing challenge. He guards all our ways and he is ever vigilant. He guards our every coming and going. Imagine! So why do we feel so alone sometimes? Why do we feel forgotten? And why do we feel that "life" is out to get us?

Well sometimes, we may be pursued by evil, but most of the time we are our own worst enemies. We give way too much power to others to hurt us over trivial things. Partly when we are wounded, all too often we don't really let go of the hurt and so it taints other encounters and we become defensive when no one is attacking us. God is the fount of forgiveness. Maybe he is in part guarding us from our self-abuse. We are children of the King and the whole kingdom has been given us to share and celebrate. Yet we all too often act like beggars scrapping for a crust of bread. The song of the Universe courses through our souls as it does through all of creation, yet we deafen to its notes and cling instead to our fears and our all too familiar excuses of why we are oppressed and why whatever isn't our fault. Is the glass half empty or half full and even more importantly do we realize that this vessel actually holds Living Water?

I am not diminishing the reality of life's struggles as I am myself challenged lately in being even more poured out than usual. But it is important to take stock of some central truths. God loves us so much that bridging the estrangement between us remains a passionate urging of the One Who Is, the One Whose Being is Love.
The fire of love that is the mystery of the Song between Father, Son, and Spirit is so beyond all we can even imagine. Yet we know that this Love longs for us and longed to bring us all into wholeness. So it is that Jesus came to show us  the Way home, and when we didn't "get it," Jesus stayed true to being the Message even to the cross and beyond, inviting us through the triumph of the cross into the fullness of our creation, a fullness that can only be known as with all creatures, in union with the One who is Creator. Why then with all this seeking on God's part of our healing, our reconciliation with him, would he not protect what he with such passion welcomed back in forgiveness to wholeness and union?

God has our back, and our front and everything in between. We are not alone no matter our daily experiences of loneliness. We are never abandoned no matter how much we may feel forgotten. Our names are written on the heart of God and God's memory is forever. Let us then lift our eyes up to the mountain of God confident that the Lord is our help and will not fail. He will shepherd us home and not let us slip on the rocks, if only we will let him come into our hearts. God does not abandon us, but sometimes we do put God off. We are weary and we know that being with God means loving at all cost. When we are tired of the cost, we may not always be fully receptive to the embrace of God. How patient is our Lover who as God calls each unique soul genuinely: Beloved! Imagine, the Lord of the Universe who made the heavens and the earth of all worlds and all manner of things known and unknown, calls us individually truly Beloved!!

The mind cannot process such things so grandiose, so profound, it is beyond the greatest of human intellects to comprehend; so let us not try. Let us receive with our hearts a Mystery we cannot ever understand, nor do we really need to. Love is not best dissected but celebrated. It is a gift to be received and cherished. God is our Guardian. We can trust like Julian of Norwich: all shall be well, all is well. God is holding all our brokenness and he will not scatter our pieces to the four corners of the universe, rather he gathers us unto His heart  and breathes wholeness into us; his vision gazes upon us and his light banishes the darkness oppressing us. He lifts the weight of all the transgressions committed against us and all those we have committed and leads us to dance for joy. He is a guardian we can trust unreservedly and always. Indeed our help is from the Lord. Let us rejoice and be glad!

God bless.