Inviting my amazing young friend Liz Bowers to share how she is facing a new frontier and forging ahead into the unknown! Guest Blog spot!!!!
This year I started out on a journey far from home, far from family, and far from everything I had ever known before. It was terrifying and wonderful all at the same time. I think each one of us has experienced that feeling when we’re facing our first steps into a new frontier.
I imagine that our ancestors felt the same way setting sail on the oceans for the first time, laying down the rails for the first railroads, crossing deserts and planes in wagons, taking flight for the first time, and looking down on earth from the moon…. In the moment we’re so caught up in the every day little problems of our individual journeys into that frightening abyss that we often miss the awe of what we are accomplishing… of the mountains that we have overcome.
My journey into the frontier is far from over and the trials I have faced so far have all seemed insurmountable until I look back and find that with every greater challenge the mountains behind me look like hills and then boulders.
In ancient times the people would go to the high places to build altars to the innumerable idols they served. Idols that never answered their prayers but stood in wrath over them an insufficient explanation for the vast unknown around them… the vast unknown of the frontier of their future. Thinking of this the psalmist wrote, “I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from?” The psalmist must have thought in that moment as I do, of all the mountains in their past… maybe false idols that they served, maybe challenges that they faced that seemed to much, and maybe they also thought of the greatest among the mountains and the songs of ascent that the people sang as they journeyed there to worship the Lord!
The psalmist remembered the Overcomer!
“My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip— He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you— the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all harm— He will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” (Psalm 121)
This Psalm itself became a song sang by the people as the climbed up the mountain of the Lord and it has carried many generations through countless challenges. At Christmas time we remember the greatest journey ever made of God who came to dwell among us, the God who loved us enough to journey His own frontier all the way to the grave. With the new year we look to that inspiration and desire to become better human beings, to lift one another up, and begin our moments without the burdens of last year’s failures and disarray weighing us down.
Dear reader, you are called to journey out into your own frontier. Know that challenges and mountains will come. Remember that you don’t face them alone. The Lord is your help as He is mine and we journey together until we reach the place He has prepared for us, the city called THE LORD IS THERE!