Psalm 121 is read at graveside services even though it would
seem help from the hills is a little late in arriving. But then funerals are
for the living not the dead. It is the living who struggle to hold onto to “my
help comes from the Lord” in the sight of loved ones laid to rest, even when death
is a welcome release. To speak of our God who neither slumbers nor sleeps In
the face of life’s inevitable end denies death the last word for the deceased
as well as those who mourn. There are times, of course, when the ancient words
alone fail to help, when desperate prayer is spoken into deafening silence,
when the Lord awake seems absent. It is
for those trying times that God gifts us with help closer to home than the
hills. Speaking the ancient words of faith together, even with weeping eye and
through clenched teeth, keeps us from the evil of hopelessness and in the life
of the community our lives are kept. All
of which remembers the help that came from the holy hill of Calvary when the
Lord who neither slumbers nor sleeps slept in death and three days later rose
again so that our final “going out” would be our forever “coming in”.
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