From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed:
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Psalm 61:2, KJV

[5 minutes]

This time 43 years ago I was meditating on these very words. For days on end I agonized over how they’d become my lived experience.

My “end of the earth” was a college campus in Chattanooga, Tennessee and I was an “overwhelmed” college kid. My desperation owed to the fact I couldn’t find any reason to go on if something didn’t change. My miserable world ran late for an appointment with a giant fork in the road. Meanwhile, there I was, stuck in a mud hole on the side of the road.

Quite suddenly, from nowhere, this verse hit my ear drums like a percussive bomb. Everything shook and shifted. I memorized it. I quoted it. I gnawed on it. I wept over it. I fell asleep with it muttering on my lips. I visited it in my dreams.

It now strikes me as odd that in all of the decades of preaching, I’ve used that scripture as the main text of a sermon perhaps once or twice. And yet, it remains the sun in my existential solar system.

The climb

If you pray that God will move your mountain and he doesn’t, assume Christ wants you to climb it instead and see him transfigured.

— Beth Moore

Sometimes we see a mountain and pray that it gets moved. Other times we see one and say — in the spirit of 85-year old Caleb — “Take me there, Lord.” My weary heart was done with ‘making mud-pies in a slum.’* I was now after the Rock that was higher than i.

Since then, I’ve been tempted by lesser things, settled for them, repented of them, and raised my eyes again and again to that blessed Mount. I’m still climbing, thanks be to God.

Almost twenty years ago (I remember it well because it was my last hospitalization for pressure sores), a family friend told me she couldn’t shake an image of me from her mind. In that hard season I was as depressed in spirit as a body could be, fighting yet another pressure wound and facing more weeks and months of hospitalization. When the woman asked if she might share an encouraging word, I was only too happy to listen.

I see you as a mountain goat winding around a tall mountain on steady feet. I’m struck by how the feet stay planted even though the path is treacherous. And every time you go around the mountain, you go higher. The way is never easy, but as you keep moving, you keep climbing, climbing, ever higher.

Think what you will about visions and mental pictures, but I must say I found it gripping. She hadn’t known about Psalm 61 and its impact on my life, so the image had me transfixed, even more so because of its peculiar timing. My situation was redolent of a frightened Gideon hiding out in the wine-press, told by the Angel he was a mighty man of valor. A sure-footed mountain goat conquering the craggy cliffs? Me? Hospital-bed me?

Moving stones

The timing of God, beloved, is impeccable. Of course it seemed a bit too “peccable” for Mary and Martha when Jesus finally showed up for their departed brother’s funeral. Our Lord was only fashionably late, turns out. It seems the will of the Almighty was to let things play out. By doing so, our Lord showed them his heart (“Jesus wept”) and his awesome power.

Lazarus’s resurrection suddenly planted the idea in their heads that there was no obstacle greater than God’s power! Sickness? Come on, small potatoes. Quieting a storm? Childs play. Walking on water? He could do that in his sleep! But death? Even worse, a fourth-day-body-is-ripe-by-now death? Now we’re talking.

Let the reader understand: there’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned resurrection to keep you climbing just to see what else God has in store. I needed a resurrection while I languished — overwhelmed — on that bed of misery…and God gave me one. He set my feet on a Rock, praise his Name. I’ve been the beneficiary of a thousand and one mercies and so have you. You’ve seen God do things that took your breath away, things that put you flat on your face in worship. So have I.

My sister told me once upon a time she wanted to see me reach heights that few have ever reached. There are countless others who have gone a fair sight higher than I can imagine for myself. By the grace of God, and with his help to give me sure feet, I’m going to keep climbing. I’m tired of pebbles and stones. I want the Rock that is higher than i.

Selah, beloved. Onward and upward!

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*Full quote by C. S. Lewis, “We do not want too much, but too little. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The Weight of Glory)