From where will my help come?

I lift up my eyes to the hills — from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

Is this what we think today as we set on journeys with our travel itineraries, GPS trackers and travel insurance? Do we believe our help comes from the Lord in our journey through life? Journey’s which we are far less in our control than we might think. Consider the journey’s undertaken in recent days and weeks.

In Queensland many have journeyed from their flooded homes, some still echoing with the lives of loved ones who were drowned in the torrent.

In Christchurch as the earth shook many have journeyed away from the city where the destruction has made many their homes unsafe, suburbia unliveable and left many without livelihoods.

In Japan the earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear reactor emergency have devastated lives and prompted journey’s filled with sorrow and terror in the midst of a cold winter.

Terrible and catastrophic events beyond the scope of our control, prompting journey’s many filled with danger and sorrow and mystery – what comes next? What do we do now?

In the midst of these natural disasters, and may I emphasise not ‘acts of God’ as the legal fraternity like to define them, many other people have set out on other journey’s of great risk and terror. Journey’s generated by humanity’s madness.

There have been those who have journeyed out of Libya, and of other countries where refugees flee persecution and war, hoping for not even a new life but simple to save their lives. Often only to find themselves lost amidst vast seas of refugees in overcrowded camps or risking journey’s on leaky boats to find themselves detained, incarcerated in strange lands.

There have been journeys away from families where relationships have broken down, children taken from homes where they have experienced nothing but abuse, wives leaving husbands and husbands leaving wives. The journey’s of the broken hearted.

There have been journeys of young girls and women into other countries lured by the promise of work to find that when they arrive their own bodies are what are for sale.

And for many of us there may have been new journeys as well.

There may have been a journey into uncertainty as medical tests reveal the sickness or disease which might be wracking our bodies.

Or possibly a journey into a new life without someone we have loved, our hearts filled with mourning at their death.

Maybe it has been a journey into unemployment of retirement.

And for all of these journeys and the ones we do not know about we hear the words of the Psalmist givign hope and comfort.

I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.