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