Rambling for Kirwan Uniting Church Keep in Touch newsletter 20 October 2019

All of New Zealand has magnificent, unspoiled, frequently devoid of other humans, beaches. This area of the South Island between Lake Ohau and Invercargill, centred on Dunedin, where we have stayed with friends and trundled along in our campervan, has pretty impressive mountains and hills, too. Snow-clad, even, brrr.

While I’m driving, Leisa will sometimes say “Wow, look at those hills” or “Wow, look down at that beach”. Of course, I don’t distract her like that when she’s driving. Do I. The trouble is, I can’t look, because I’m busy ensuring that we stay on the road on those twisty hills.

The psalmist (Ps 121) looked to the hills when he wondered where his help might come from. I don’t know which of his many scrapes he needed to be rescued from, but he knew that help would come from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He wasn’t driving a motor home longer than an ambulance, but he still had to watch his footing, and relied on God to not let him slip. We drivers worry about falling asleep at the wheel, but the psalmist’s God - and ours! - doesn’t slumber or sleep and watches over our life. That life, and what Ps 121 calls our “coming and going”, will change scene one day from one sort of life to another, eternal. But God’s watching over us, in whatever stage of life, temporal or eternal, is “both now, and forevermore”.

See ya Sunday! (If the Lord will, and the creek don’t rise).

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