Links for today’s readings:
Mar 12 Read: Proverbs 31 Listen: (2:50) Read: Psalm 48 Listen: (1:28)
Scripture Focus: Psalm 48.1-3, 14
1 Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise,
in the city of our God, his holy mountain.
2 Beautiful in its loftiness,
the joy of the whole earth,
like the heights of Zaphon is Mount Zion,
the city of the Great King.
3 God is in her citadels;
he has shown himself to be her fortress.
14 For this God is our God for ever and ever;
he will be our guide even to the end.
Reflection: A Hill That Defeated the Mountains
By John Tillman
In the 1995 film, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, a surveyor making a new map finds a Welsh village’s beloved “mountain” is 20 feet too short and would be designated a “hill.” The villagers won’t accept this downgrade and carry dirt to the peak to raise the hill’s height.
It was a mountain in their hearts, so they labored to ensure it remained a mountain on the map. The film’s tale was fictional. However, new measurements have upgraded hills to mountains in modern times. One example comes from Wales, in 2018.
In the Bible, mountains were considered divine places where Heaven touched Earth. The greater the mountain, the greater the god.
Zion is Yahweh’s “holy mountain” (Psalm 2.6), the home of Jerusalem and the Temple. Zaphon (known today as Jebel Aqra on Syria’s border with Turkey) was the “holy mountain” of the Canaanite god Baal.
Zion, at 2,460 feet in elevation, is dwarfed by Zaphon at 5,669 and other, closer mountains like Mount Hermon at 9,232. This psalm is not contradicting geographical facts or calling for human efforts to “build up” Zion to match Zaphon’s height. The psalm’s claims are theological.
No mountain compared with Zion because no god compared with Yahweh. No matter how high Zaphon or Hermon rise toward Heaven, their gods are gods of darkness and death, not light and life. The “loftiness” and “beauty” of Zion is the loftiness and beauty of God who chooses to dwell there.
Jesus doesn’t dwell with us on a mountain, but through the Holy Spirit, the scriptures, and the church. That’s our “Zion.” However, we do have competing “divine mountains” and mapmakers trying to “downgrade” the way of Jesus. They say loving God, neighbor, and enemy is a nice “hill,” but we need a mountain. They say the way of Jesus doesn’t work in the real world. They say love is weak, forgiveness is complicity, integrity equals losing, and character is cowardly.
Don’t you believe them; they are wrong. Their gods are false. Calvary’s “hill” defeated their mountains.
Survey “Zion’s citadels” and walk with her king, Jesus. He is “our guide, even to the end.” (Psalm 48.14) In the end, no mountain will be higher than his. It is better to be in his city on a hill than on any mountain that makes false promises of greater things.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to you dwelling. — Psalm 43.3
– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.
Read more: The Impossibility of Proverbs 31
She sets a high bar…If she is the ideal for all women, she is also the ideal for all men
Read more: A City to Live In
Zion hints at Heaven, described by biblical writers as a city of healing, peace, justice, and mercy, from which the river of life flows.