My favorite place to write is sitting at the old oak table in the dining area which looks out onto the hillsides covered in tall dark pines. Our windows open up a panoramic view over the valley towards Brundage Mountain where if I get up early enough I can see the sun rise up over the far horizon before it comes through the branches of the large tree in front of the deck. On such mornings I see light draw away the dark shadows and spot the first finches flitting to the feeders.  In the winter dawn comes a little later – and I can justify being a slug-a-bed half an hour longer. I know the morning sky will always be a fresh canvas on which the clouds paint themselves in abstract shapes. Not only are God’s mercies new every morning, but so are His wonderful surprises.

I have been journaling at this same table for so many years now I’m losing track of them. I’ve looked out over the same landscape, the same sky and driveway and oddly am never bored. I find it is a paradox that the very sameness outside my windows is coincidentally never quite the same. A leaf drifts; a crow flies higher, new tracks appear in the snow. This in itself is a wonder. We are made to wonder at such things, to examine the meaning of each day, to breathe another breath – and to thank the God who makes it possible for us to seek Him every morning in the world and in our hearts.

At the very top of the hillside to the west, a tall snag sticks upward like the mast of a ship. I call it The Tall Dead Tree and I look for it every day, glad when it is still upright. That tree marks a turning point in my life, when God’s Word bypassed my brain and dropped the 12 inches into my heart. I first noticed the tree during a dreadfully dark season in my life. I saw only a dead thing, naked and bare of branches and leaves, without life giving sap, still standing with no purpose at all.  Silhouetted  against the sky it seemed a perfect metaphor for me and the life I was living. Yet, I couldn’t take my eyes away from it. Every morning I’d search the hillside – and there it was just the way it was the day before.

Then one morning as I fixated on the snag, the words of Psalm 121 came unbidden to me:
I will lift up my eyes to the hills –
Where does my help come from?
It comes from the LORD
The maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2

The psalm spoke something new and different. Just as the psalmist looked up to the hills of Jerusalem during his pilgrimage of worship, so did I need to lift my eyes higher than my circumstances. The pilgrim’s help came from the LORD as he sought Him in Jerusalem’s temple. Where did my help come from? It too comes from the LORD God, “the maker of heaven and earth” right outside my window. Even as I scanned the hillside and saw only a dead snag, God was drawing my eyes toward Him.

In the Old Testament God called Israel a rebellious, stiff-necked people because of their stubbornness and refusal to obey His commandments. Isaiah gives a colorful, graphic and description of his people’s hard heartedness:
For I knew how stubborn you were; your neck muscles were iron, your forehead was bronze. Isaiah 48:4
Sometimes when I’ve had a stiff neck from a cramped muscle, it hurts to move my head in any direction and so all I can do is look straight ahead. I feels like my “ neck is of iron and my forehead bronze”. I can neither bow my head nor can I look in any direction except straight ahead. My vision is seriously impaired and mobility is constrained.
The Jews were described as stiff-necked because their pride kept them from looking up to the hills, from seeking God who was their Help and Refuge. Worse, they were stiff-necked,  too stubborn to bow their heads in humility. Their  pride wouldn’t let them prostrate themselves in obedience to the covenant God had made with them.

As were the Israelites, so are we also. No one is exempt from pride. Paul warns in Acts 7:51
“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!”
How often we clench our teeth and look only straight ahead instead of lifting our eyes upward, away from trials and troubles. The problem with looking only straight ahead is that the view is extremely narrow. We get a stiff neck from clenched muscles. Pride immobilizes the heart from seeking God’s divine help :” I can do this by myself. I don’t need to look farther than the next few feet.” We believe our own deception: “if only I can keep my eyes right in front of me, I won’t fall or stumble and I’ll be perfectly in control.  Instead, we end up with tunnel vision and we end up in rebellion.
Whenever I am tempted to resist the Holy Spirit and go my own way instead of following Jesus on His way, I need to sit for a while in front of the Lord, be it at my writing table in the early morning or on my knees at night. Humility and gratitude more than anything loosens the enemy’s vise grip on our necks.
EAG