This perspective is provided in Psalm 102 as it moves from verse 11 to verse 12 and reveals a blessed contrast. What the psalmist needs is for God to reach down with one of His long arms, take his hand, and lift up his chin. This is the answer to his distress, his depression, his discouragement: to cast his eyes on God and His ways.

Searching for Permanence

The blessed contrast in verse 12 between the psalmist and God is striking: God is “enthroned forever . . . remembered throughout all generations.”

In verses 1–11, the psalmist feels as if he is caught in a meaningless passage of time. “Days,” “smoke,” “shadows”—all these he uses to describe his experience, and they all have one thing in common: they pass.

In verses 12–22, the psalmist receives consolation through meditating on God and the fact that He is the master of time (v. 13). It is as if he leads with the frailty of life only to set in relief the eternity of God, that He stands outside of the transience of life, even commandeering it for His purposes. For the psalmist, reality indeed has solidity insofar as God stands behind it.

In another psalm, Psalm 121, the psalmist muses: “I lift my eyes to the hills, From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”

Why does the psalmist look to the hills, to the mountains? What do mountains have to do with the psalmist’s call for help?

My family and I recently went to the mountains of western North Carolina. What’s striking is everything that surrounded us there reflects change except one thing—the mountains themselves. The sun rises and sets. The streams flow and are in constant flux. The leaves change color, die, and fall. But the rocks, the mountains are steady and unchanging (at least to the human eye).

The psalmist is crying out for help, and he is seeking an image of something with permanence, something that can be depended upon: mountains. Indeed, God is called a “rock.” In turning to the Lord, we are provided with something powerful and unchanging—an image that tells us something of Himself, His character, and His purposes.

God Blesses through the Body

It is the purposes of God that are also highlighted here, not His purposes solely focused on the individual psalmist but on the people of God (that is what is symbolized in “Zion”). Isn’t it interesting that as the psalmist transitions from himself to God, the answers for his plight come in the context of God’s purposes for His people? That is, he realizes his well-being is caught up with the well-being of God’s people. Biblical religion is not merely “Jesus and me.” The psalmist sees that he will be blessed through God’s dealings with His people collectively. Through the restoration of the many in the covenant, the one, the individual, finds relief.

God is merciful. “He regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer. . . . [He hears] the groans of the prisoners” (Ps. 102:17, 20). The eternal God is not deaf to the travails of those caught in the thicket of suffering, but as He meets their frailty with His eternal power, He addresses them as a body: “The LORD builds up Zion; he appears in his glory. . . . that they may declare in Zion the name of the LORD, in Jerusalem [i.e., among the people] his praise” (vv. 16, 21).