Hillside worship!

Dan Harper February 17, 2026 2 0

Playlists

Add to Favourites

Save for later

Listen to this daily worship

Psalm 99 (NIV-UK)

1 The Lord reigns,
    let the nations tremble;
he sits enthroned between the cherubim,
    let the earth shake.
2 Great is the Lord in Zion;
    he is exalted over all the nations.
3 Let them praise your great and awesome name –
    he is holy.

4 The King is mighty, he loves justice –
    you have established equity;
in Jacob you have done
    what is just and right.
5 Exalt the Lord our God
    and worship at his footstool;
    he is holy.

6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
    Samuel was among those who called on his name;
they called on the Lord
    and he answered them.
7 He spoke to them from the pillar of cloud;
    they kept his statutes and the decrees he gave them.

8 Lord our God,
    you answered them;
you were to Israel a forgiving God,
    though you punished their misdeeds.
9 Exalt the Lord our God
    and worship at his holy mountain,
    for the Lord our God is holy.

Did you know, that one of the wonders of creation is that time travels at different speeds in different places. This is due to the effects of both Special Relativity and General Relativity, both absolutely fascinating and utterly baffling concepts.

Those who have spent their life seeking to understand this tell us that the International Space Station, due in part to being further from the centre of the globe than the earth’s surface, travels through time about 0.01 seconds per year slower than those of us trapped by gravity.

This feels very counter-intuitive and very far away from anything relevant. But it is not. If you go up into the hills, and get luck with the weather and where you are looking, there is a chance that you will see the ISS fly overhead. Knowing that a man-made object is hurtling round the planet, and that we know such a strange thing about how time works, can fill us with awe.

In our reading the Psalmist speaks of the wonder found on the Mountain of the Lord. They speak to the awe experienced when on the mountaintop with God.

To reach the top of a mountain is a wonderful feeling, it lifts us beyond the ordinary and carries us in our imagination and spirituality. To look up to the ISS, or read the 99th Psalm, we can climb literal and metaphorical mountains and encounter the wonder of the divine in ways we don’t understand.   

Prayer:

Dear God,

When I know what is happening, or I’m dazed and confused, help me look past what I know and see the wonder of you.

Amen.