Psalm 46

Read Psalm 46.

Strange, isn’t it, that the hardest command in the whole psalm is also the shortest? Two words only. Two words that cut against everything our world trains us to do: Be still.

Our entire age conspires against stillness. The phone in your pocket hums and vibrates with an incessant anxiety, keeping you tethered to a constant stimulus of interruptions—updates, outrages, manufactured fears. The news cycle never rests, a ‘raging sea’ of catastrophes, always demanding we look, click, despair.

And, to be honest, the church—both as a people and as an institution—hasn’t exactly been a refuge from the noise. On the one hand, we baptized religious busyness as faith. We measure vitality and faithfulness by programs, platforms, and products. Life with God is supposed to be efficient, productive, even marketable—everything except still. God is a product to be consumed, rather than a fortress to rest in. On the other hand, we’ve bought into the idea that it is the church’s business to stir the pot of division and distrust, and to stoke the fire that ‘melts the earth.’ After all, surely the message of Jesus, before it is anything else, is first and foremost concerned with the geo-political affairs of this particular moment and (certainly) this particular country, and thus it is our job to spread the message not of salvation and redemption, but of judgement and suspicion, condemnation and conspiracy, right?

Maybe not.

Psalm 46, instead, gives us a picture of a world that is constantly thrown around by the tumult of its own pride and selfishness, tossed about by hubris operating on a massive scale. And, Psalm 46 urges, pleads with us: Be still.

Stillness, then, is not the absence of noise and chaos but the presence of God in the middle of it. It is not passive withdrawal, but active trust. We—I am foremost among sinners in this respect—sometimes get lost in our pursuit to “know” God, seeking an ever increasing store of knowledge, information, and theological party tricks. But Psalm 46 is a reminder that there is a prior step: Being still. Being. Stillness.  

The command is brutally simple: Stop. Stop striving. Stop panicking. Stop gossiping. Stop imagining that the world spins on the fragile axis of your strength. And be still. In that stillness, you will find the surprising, yet liberating truth that He is God and… you are not. And that is indeed Good News. As we’ve seen in the Letter to the Hebrews over the past month: Jesus has done what needs to be done—He reigns as personal Savior and cosmic King, God of the universe and the Lord of every restless heart.

So today, just for a moment, let the nations rage. Let the mountains tremble. Let the earth melt. But also let yourself take a deep breath. And just be. Be still. Be still and know that He is God.

 - Chaz H.