Where our help comes from

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During college, I taped a religious poster on my dorm room wall. Under a photo of a white country church against a green, timbered hill were the words, "I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help."

I liked the Bible verse, the scene was pretty, and I enjoyed the peaceful reminder of rural home places. But a friend who was knowledgeable in scripture said the poster was theologically incorrect. The caption lacked the question mark after "help," so that the help seemed to come from the hills-from the peace and beauty of nature-rather than from God.

It was a fine distinction, since the poster did include a church, and a landscape is not a far-fetched way of symbolizing, if not God, then our longing for God or a location where we feel close to God. We are also often nostalgic for country churches: we tend to think that when times were simpler, people felt closer to God.