On Psalms
One of the long term traditions at our multi-faith pantry has been to pause at some point each week to read, sing or pray what we call the Pantry Psalm.
They’re old words with deep feelings. Ancient prayer and wisdom — sacred to Jews and Christians, honoured within Islam, and open and human enough for all; for reflection, lament, gratitude, and hope.
If you would like to sign up for the weekly digital What’s-app Pantry Psalm group let us know here.
Here’s this weeks offering with a song and a pantry story.
Pantry Psalm #121
(for Sunday March 1, Lent 2A)
“I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from?”
Psalm 121 is called a Song of Ascents. A pilgrim song. A road song. Traditionally prayed by people of faith climbing toward the temple in Jerusalem. Christian’s pray it this time of year through the journey of Lent.
The songs core image and question suggests the ancient journey is surrounded by many hills, with shrines to competing deities, offering promises of help and security, but often at a price, or for a sacrifice.
Because the hills are where power gathers.
Where budgets are written.
Where grain is tariffed and traded.
Where long view speeches are made about growth while cupboards shrink.
But this week, our hill is not Jerusalem.
It is the steep rise from the Flemington flats to the pantry, backdropped dramatically by the government and corporate towers of CBD Melbourne.
I lift up my eyes.
Not in awe.
In need.
‘My help comes from the Lord,
maker of heaven and earth.’
Not from the market’s mercy.
Not from political theatrics.
Not from systems that can’t feel hunger.
From the One who made wheat grow in the first place.
From the One who does not sleep
through policy meetings
or eviction notices.
Our pantry pilgrim was an older Vietnamese man. Quiet. Polite. Careful with his English. He has no family supports in Australia. The pantry has become one of the few steady places in his week; food, yes, but also faces that know his name.
But the ascent has been getting harder.
His legs are weaker now. His breath shorter. The trolley rolls heavier on the return trip. Still, he comes.
Recently he didn’t make it.
Halfway up the hill, his body gave out. Exhausted. Immobile. In tears.
“I lift up my eyes to the hills,
where does my help come from?”
It’s a different psalm when you are stuck halfway.
The hills are beautiful in poetry.
They are less beautiful when you cannot climb them.
He had to cry out. Had to wave down a neighbour driving past. It’s a hard way to meet someone. A vulnerable way. Not the curated introduction of a dinner party, but the raw exposure of need.
He asked for help.
And someone stopped.
“The Lord is your keeper…
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in.”
Sometimes divine protection looks suspiciously ordinary. Sometimes keeping looks like a neighbour braking at the side of the road.
He arrived at pantry shaken, still catching his breath. His neighbour concerned and curious. But they arrived.
We often read Psalm 121 as comfort, a promise that nothing bad will happen. But the psalm never says the road will be easy. It says you will not be alone on it.
Because in reality
The sun will strike.
The moon will unsettle.
The hill will be steep.
But still: you are kept.
Food insecurity is not poetic. Ageing without family is not poetic. Public housing on a hill is not poetic.
But community can be.
It is a hard way to meet neighbours... crying in the street, waving down a car because your body won’t cooperate. Yet this is how local food sharing works. Not as charity from a distance, but as proximity. As interruption. As the refusal to let someone collapse unseen.
We all have to eat.
And sometimes we have to admit we cannot climb alone.
“I lift up my eyes to the hills.”
This week the pantry line feels less triumphant and more trembling.
Help did not descend from the skyline.
It came from the driver who chose to stop.
From the pantry volunteers who noticed he was shaken.
From the quiet web of care that forms when food is shared locally.
‘The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in.’
Sometimes that keeping looks like policy.
Sometimes it looks like protest.
And sometimes it looks like a car door opening on a steep Melbourne hill.
If your legs are strong this week, notice who is halfway up.
If you are halfway up, know this: crying out is not failure. It is faith.
Because Psalm 121 is not a song for the powerful on the hilltop.
It is a song for pilgrims.
For the breathless.
For the ones who need help.
And in a good neighbourhood;
help answers.
Song:
My Help (Ps. 121) in Hebrew & English (acapella) – by Michael Card sung by Kevin Qualls
Join us in this work:
• Donate food or volunteer time.
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Much Grace and Peace- The menu is the message.
– Rev. Marcus
