Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God”
For those of us of a certain age and vulnerability these are times of enforced stillness. For those on the frontline, for parents homeschooling, for essential workers life is of course anything but still. But whether your body has been cozying down or crazy busy in recent weeks, I would venture to suggest that your mind, your emotions, your soul have been anything but still. Or is it just me?
We are bombarded on a daily basis with information, misinformation, seriously bad news, slightly positive news, political point scoring, and heart warming stories - and, dare I say it, alongside the many positive and soul nourishing messages from those with truly pastoral hearts, there is also the inevitable outpouring of apocalyptic pronouncements by those who are convinced of their personal hotline to God and their mission to pass God’s message of judgment upon the world. I find the absolute certainty and total absence of self-doubt with which they declare God’s purposes in the pandemic a little bewildering. I remember that Job was so certain, when his life collapsed around him, that he knew what God was up to, and that didn’t go so well, until he came to the point of admitting “surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know”.
In Psalm 46 v. 10 which is written in the midst of challenging and turbulent times equal to ours, God doesn’t say “Here is my blueprint, listen and learn, he says “Be still, and know that I am God”. I have always taken that to be a comforting, quieting word - and heaven knows we could do with a few of those right now - but in context it is also, and primarily, an authoritative word - just as Jesus, in the midst of a storm, told the wind and the waves to be still, and said “Stop, enough!” so He is demonstrating his ultimate authority here.
There is a God, and its not me - or you!
Maybe, just maybe, we will come out of this lockdown better, stronger, humbled by a fresh understanding, learned through enforced stillness and contemplation, of the extent of our own smallness.
Before the Virus our lives were so busy that we didn’t have time to think, to contemplate, to stop and appreciate the ways in which as a society we all rely on the service of those who care for our health and wellbeing and the education of our children. We too easily forget that God places love, service and self-sacrifice above celebrity, wealth and power, and that he embodied those virtues in his Incarnate Son.
It is sobering to think how much I, as a Christian and a pastor, have unconsciously absorbed the collective arrogance of a culture that assumes we are masters of all we survey. It is very easy to stand up every week and preach a triumphalist sermon, giving the appearance of unshakeable certainty on every moral, spiritual and theological issue. I hope I have not done so, but fear I have. Knowing the Bible is a good thing, but knowing God, now that’s something else!
There is a God, and its not me!
Psalm 46 is all about finding our security in God rather than circumstances - v. 1 he is “our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble”. There is something in the human psyche that wants to control our circumstances. That’s one of the reasons why this current lockdown is so unsettling. I don’t like being out of control!
Religion is all about control. Everything we learn from religion is about controlling our circumstances - follow this ritual, believe this dogma, do good stuff, don’t do bad stuff, obey the rules - and good things will happen to you. Break the rules, do bad stuff, and bad things will happen. That’s what I learned from religion at an early age. That’s what Job’s false friends told him when his life fell apart - that it was all his fault. Maybe that’s what I am tempted to think when my world is under threat right now - that I need to get back control, read the right books, pray the right prayers, think the right thoughts, and all will be well.
I love it that Jesus had no time for such religious nonsense. His message was all about grace, his love and forgiveness, his peace, is an unearned gift.
And I love these words from C.S.Lewis in A Grief Observed -
“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered from time to time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence?”
‘Be still’ - the Hebrew word literally means to be weak, to let go, to release, to stop. Stop trying to BE God and LET God be God.
Ex.14:14 says “The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still”
Being still will allow me to stop and remind myself that there will be an end to all of the pain in this world. One day there will be a new heaven and a new earth where pain and sorrow will be no more. In the meantime God is with us in our pain, weeping with us as we weep. And even though this current virus is powerful - God is infinitely more so, and ultimately He holds my life - this world - in his more than capable hands.
I am relieved that God’s chosen people in the Bible weren’t any different from me - they were fearful, they complained to God, they needed to be shaken out of their temptation to put him in a box of their own construction.
Being still with God allows him to surprise me, to remind me of my own smallness. Being still gives Him a quiet space in which to speak to my heart.
Maybe this is a time for me to start letting God be God.
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