A Psalm for Slippery Slopes

More often than not, the mountains that King David saw around him were cause for fear, not reassurance. But then, he knew that his true help came from the God who created the hills. This removed the fear of falling and sliding down a slope from which there was no salvation.

If you’re writing a novel, you know that point of view, plot and characters are all integral aspects of your work.

But you also know that setting or sense of place cannot be ignored. It’s critical. Where does the story take place? As the novelist, you have to help the reader feel it, see it and experience it.

So when going to the text before us today, we cannot ignore the “place” or the setting of this text, Psalm 121.

Let’s detour for a sec and look at the concept of “place,” and then we will come back to Psalm 121.

In his recent book, Working, Robert Caro, who has written definitive biographies of New York urban planner Robert Moses and former President Lyndon Johnson, says that “a sense of place,” which is commonly accepted as important in fiction, is just as important in biographies.

Caro defines sense of place as “helping the reader to visualize the physical setting in which a book’s action is...