A Meditation on Psalm 46 – We will trust in You.

            All of us in some way or other have found this lockdown period difficult.   It has been particularly hard for those who have lost loved ones and have not been able to be with them in their last moments and give them a proper send-off afterwards, or to have time to grieve with family, relatives and friends, to comfort, hug, and cry together.  For those who have had their treatments cancelled or postponed, or find that they cannot see someone for a medical issue, it can be an anxious time not knowing how it is all going to work out.  Then there are those who have been on furlough finding that now that the furlough period is coming to an end so are their jobs, or that their place of work is going out of business. There is a degree of stress from home schooling, working at home with the family around, or from feelings of isolation from a long period of not being able to meet people, entertain, visit folk in their homes, go to church normally, sing, or just be free to shop without having to queue or wear a mask when we feel like it; in short, of doing the normal things that we used to do in life.  It can feel quite lonely, particularly if no one ever phones or asks how you are doing. 

This time has made me think again of Psalm 46. Verses 2 and 3 say, “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”  These tumultuous times that we are going through can seem a bit like that for us today.  We may not be experiencing the physical events of earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, or tsunamis, like we did in Japan, but we are experiencing them in other ways.  The economy is taking a bashing, there is racial unrest, political uncertainty as major powers face off against each other, and there is no agreement on the Brexit negotiations, on top of the confusion that has been created by the regular changing of pandemic regulations.  It can feel like verse 6.  “Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;…”  Where and when is it all going to end?   

The psalmist has the answer in verse 10.  “Be still and know that I am God.”   I was listening to a song on YouTube recently sung by Geraldine Latty called “Yesterday Today and Forever.”[1]  Each verse finishes with the phrase, “we will trust in You, trust in You.”  The way Geraldine sang the last verse was to repeat this phrase over and over again.  It did seem a bit repetitive and boring initially, but the more I thought about it, how true it is!  We will trust in You, and we will continue to trust in You. Even in the hard times, we will trust in You, no matter what we will trust in You, and keep on trusting in You.

This is what the psalmist means in verse 10.  He is saying that God can be trusted, leave it with Him, He has it all in control.  Be still; wait for God’s timing in things.  He says in the first verse, “… he is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.”  Therefore He is the place to which we can run and hide as we wait for Him.  Another reason is repeated in verse 7 and 11.  He tells us that not only is God our refuge, the place to which we can run for safety, but he is also with us as the “Lord Almighty.”  This title carries the idea of an all-powerful supreme Ruler of the universe.  It was the Lord Almighty who brought the hosts of Israel out of Egypt and carried them through the wilderness.  The fact that it is this one who is named as being with us in all the upheavals and turmoil of life should give us sufficient reassurance that, as we face the uncertainties of life, we can have confidence to trust in Him for all things.  This all-powerful Creator of the universe, the supreme King of everything, will not allow anything to separate us from His presence with us. 

We can therefore take comfort from this short psalm when life around us seems out of control and beyond our understanding.    

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQjEiY30yI&list=RDEMtnLOAZbkyh32vi_DrgdKVw&index=2

Part 2 – Why Read the Bible?

            Reading the Bible can be enjoyable as well as a challenge.  There are difficult parts, as well as passages that don’t seem to have much relevance to us in our modern world, .e.g., the lists of families and tribes. However, God has given us a message in the Bible, and we should at least make the effort to read it. 

            A number of us have begun to read through the Bible in a year.  However, you may not have the time, or be free at this time to join us, but you can still read through the whole Bible by yourself.  You don’t need a plan or a schedule; just work at it at your own pace.  If you read three chapters every day and five on Sunday, you should be able to complete the whole Bible in a year.  You can begin with the New Testament first if that is more convenient.

            There are blessings too from reading the Bible.  Two stand out from my experience of reading.  The first time I read through the Bible as part of my preparations for missions work, I managed to read it in a little over three months. A month or so after finishing, a person in my church said to me that she thought I had changed!  I can’t remember the details now, but I was reminded of Ephesians 5:26: “cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”  The word of God has a cleansing effect if we read it and allow it to influence us. 

Another experience was when I was doing a locum physiotherapy job at a rehab centre in Cardiff prior to going out to Japan.  I was having another Bible read through as part of my preparation for going out for our missions work.  I was reading the Bible in the morning, and again in my lunch break in the staff room, and again at night.  A few years later we received a letter from the superintendent physiotherapist to say that she had become a Christian, and one of the key influences had been seeing me read my Bible in the lunch break.  We never know what God may use in a person’s life to bless them. 

            But why else should we read the Bible?  First and foremost, because God has given it to us, and it is one key way that God communicates with us. God is relational and He wants to enjoy our companionship.  For that friendship to continue and grow there needs to be conversation.  God communicates with us through His word, and we communicate with Him in prayer.  However, it can be quite one sided at times.  Think about a good friend of yours.  When you meet you talk and share together.  Analyse it for a moment – how much of that time are you speaking, and how much of the time are you listening?   A good relationship will probably be 50/50.  But in our relationship with God, how much of the time are we doing the talking?  How much of it are we listening? 

            God uses His word to speak to us as the Holy Spirit takes what we read and applies it to our hearts.  Perhaps you are wondering how that works.  An example might help.  My wife and I were prompted to pray about our future in Japan and whether the time had come for us to return to the UK or not.  We had prayed quite a bit about it, seeking God’s leading in the matter.  Then one Sunday morning, when our Japanese brother was speaking from Mark 5, God used a verse in that chapter to touch our hearts.  After the service and when we were together later, I mentioned that Mark 5:19 seemed rather significant in regard to our thoughts about returning to the UK.  Esther then shared that she had felt the same thing from the same verse.  The verse says, ‘Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.’  “Go home to your family” seemed to hit both of us very forcefully.  This was confirmed in other ways as time moved on, but we believe that God had spoken to us through that verse, giving us a greater sense of direction in our thinking about our future. 

There have been many other times when God has used His word to speak into our situations.  And when we have had a word from the Lord this has enabled us to persevere in spite of difficulties, because we have the assurance and confidence that we are where God wants us to be, and we are doing what we believe God wants us to do.  Often God speaks to us by prompting a thought in our minds about something, but more often than not, we will receive confirmation from God’s word that the prompting was from Him. 

If we are not reading the Bible, God cannot use this means to speak to us.  It’s like any relationship, if it is one sided we do not benefit from the relationship as much as if it were two way.  Let’s open our hearts to God’s word and let Him speak to us through it.