Psalm 46

Oh, how I wish our candidates had read Psalm 46 before they started on the campaign trail!  Instead of roaring and foaming and shaking so that our very earth, and souls, tremble with their tumult, they may well have heeded verse 10:  “Be still and know that I am God.”  (It is always a good reminder for politician to know that God is God, not them!)

But let’s look at “Be Still” a little more closely.  It’s in our tag line, it’s what we are trying to remind ourselves to do in the midst of a chaotic world, it’s good practice to pause and sit and simply be for a change.  It sounds good to do, but there is a shift when we look at the Hebrew roots to the phrase as well as the context in which it is used.  Israel had been under siege and somehow escaped invasion in 734 and 701 BC and responded to their good fortune with “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” words that have accompanied our own times of distress and turmoil.  Throughout Scripture people have known God not through the good and easy times but through the bad and the troubled.   Simply being still doesn’t work with the context.

Rather, Be Still means Snap to attention!  Stop!  Put down whatever is in your hands.  Get rid of anything that is distracting you and attend carefully to God’s word.  What is God’s word in this Psalm?  That we will not fear though our elections and institutions and structures seem to be tottering and trembling.  That God is all about disarmament, making wars cease, bows to break and spears to shatter, so that we might live again with a vision that God, a God of peace, a God that uses “we” and not “them,” is in our very midst.  Be still and vote.  Be still and get up and protect the waters and the mountains so they won’t roar and shake any longer.  Be still and lend your voice to compassion and for the common good.  Be still and seek God in the midst of these elections, for God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.