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But sometimes the place where we feel a desperate need to call upon our God, if we are to go on at all, may be quite ordinary, little, and in the eyes of others easy, not like the land of Jordan. (“How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” It is not like that.) Or the Hermons, those massive mountains from whose roots the Jordan sprang. (“Look from Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards.” It is not like that.) So, as though to reassure the least of us in the least of small places, the Divine Author caused the writer of the psalm to choose a word which finds us where we are and says to us, “Fear not.” For the hill Mizar is the Little Mountain. The word “Mizar” means littleness. It is the word used by Lot of Zoar: “Is it not a little one?” I will remember Thee from the little hill.{3}
Thrice blessed be the love that counts no place too little to be the place whence a cry can reach high heaven. O my Lord, I am but a little child; I know not how to go out or come in. No other would be overborne by so small a trial, neither would any other say of so short a travel, the journey is too great for me. O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to Thee, but Thou, Lord, knowest Thy servant. Thou hast known my soul in adversities. Therefore from the hill Mizar, the little hill, will I remember Thee.
And He remembers us: many have told of a meeting on the road between the lover in his weakness, and Love, forever traveling in the greatness of His strength.
I used to wonder at the power of endurance I saw in the ill and the maimed. The mere thought of indoor life was anathema to me. How did they endure it? “The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way”; were they never much discouraged? Did they never say, My soul cleaveth unto the dust: my soul melteth for heaviness? Did they never feel all but drowned in deep pools of utter weariness? I know the answer to those questions now. I know that the blast of the terrible ones can be like a storm against the wall. But I know what all who know Him whom they have believed would say if a younger child asked for the story of their years. It would be a simple story. It would not tell of untempted days but of succor that never failed:
Love, traveling in the greatness of His strength,
Found me alone,
Footsore and tired by the journey’s length,
Though I had known,
All the long way, many a kindly air,
And flowers had blossomed for me everywhere.
And yet Love found me fearful, and He stayed;
Love stayed by me.
“Let not thy heart be troubled or dismayed,
My child,” said He.
Slipped from me then all troubles, all alarms;
For Love had gathered me into His arms.