“I lift my eyes up to the mountains

where does my help come home?

My help comes from you

maker of heaven and earth”

–Psalm 121:1-2

The story of my childhood was played out at the foothills and crests of the magnificent Rockies. When my family exchanged the forests of Montana for the desert of New Mexico everything about my surroundings changed except the presence of mountains. Great, glorious mountains. They were ever-present, ever-visible. It as if the giant spires are the bookends of the earliest chapters of my life.

In middle school the landscape of the playground was always changing. Each day, I needed a new map to navigate the fluctuating friendships and relationships. As the circles of friends rotated, there were days when I stepped into our station wagon feeling the strain of a day in the shadows.

And each of those days, I would be lean my head against glass and gaze up at the purple peaks of the Organ mountains. Then one day I realized that the mountains never changed. They never shifted. They never crumbled. They were there before I was and would be after I wasn’t.  They were unaffected by the climate on the playground. They did not reflect the trends of the morning or change allegiance to whatever alpha girl was wearing the crown that day.

As I lifted my mind to it’s peak and I realized that the God that made the mountains is greater than the mountains. They were strong and unshakable, because he is strong and unshakable. My help came from one who is vast, transcendent, and not shaken by the storms that brew in the valley. And while the mountains could not see me, their maker knew me and loved me. I did not need to place my hope or security on the shifting sands of the desert play yard, but could build my hope on the one who made the mountains.

The misty melodrama of seventh grade has long since evaporated and I have passed through much greater storms. The truth, however, that was pressed into my heart as my head pressed a pane of moving glass has risen high in my soul. There is a God that promises to be my keeper, my guard, my protector.

Each time I see the mountains, I find that they are an altar leading me upward to worship that one that made them. The Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, is my protector. Blessed be his glorious name.