The hills

"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." — Psalm 121:1

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

I have been sitting with the 121st Psalm for a few days now. It is a psalm I have known a long time, since before I knew what knowing a psalm meant. My mother could say it by heart. I can say it by heart. The words have been in me longer than most of the things I carry, and they have worn themselves smooth the way a river stone wears itself smooth, not from anything dramatic but from a long time of being held.

I can see the Blue Ridge from the back porch. Not clearly, not every day. On a clear morning I can see the line of them against the sky to the east, and on a morning like this one, late May, the air still cool enough to see through, they are right there. I lift up my eyes to those hills most mornings without thinking about it. It is not a decision. It is what the porch faces.

I have come to think that the psalm is doing something particular with the word help. Not rescue. Not the kind of help that arrives with sirens and fixes the thing that is broken. The psalm is talking about the kind of help that is already present, already in the room, already underneath the day before the day has started. My help cometh from the Lord. Not my help will come, eventually, if I wait long enough and ask correctly. My help cometh. It is in motion. It has been in motion.

There have been stretches of my life where I could not see the help. There was a year after Earl where I could not have told you what help meant or looked like, and I sat at this table every morning and said the words of the psalm without any feeling in them at all. I said them because I had been saying them, and because stopping felt worse than continuing. I have come to believe that the saying of the words when you do not feel them is not dishonesty. It is the practice of a thing you are going to need later, kept alive by repetition until the need arrives.

The hills are there this morning. The coffee is warm and the Bible is open and the psalm is doing what it has always done, which is hold the space where I put my weight.

Lord, my help cometh from thee.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.