Written by Richelle Thompson
Psalm 87:1a (NRSV) On the holy mountain stands the city he has founded.
Ask anyone from Appalachia. The mountains are in your blood. Spend time in the flat lands and your soul aches for the rise of the land, for the shade of the trees, the tapestry of changing leaves, adventure beyond the next bend. Streams and rivers ribbon the hills and mountains, bringing life to plants and animals and joy to tadpole-hunting children.
So many of the psalms use nature to describe our relationship with God—and God’s relationship with us. Listen to the poetry: Mountains skip like rams and hills like young sheep (Psalm 114); rivers clap their hands, and hills ring out with joy (Psalm 98); the Lord makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us to still waters (Psalm 23).
Scripture seems to want us to feel the mountains in our blood, the wave of grain at our fingertips, the rush of an ocean’s wave in our hearts. God the creator of all invites us to be one with nature, to be faithful stewards of it, so that we might enter the gates of Zion from atop the holy mountain.
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