Utumishi Blog

In the Arab world nations are in uproar, kingdoms totter and fall.  In Turkey the mountains quake.  In Thailand and Cambodia the waters swell and surge.  Here in Kenya the war with Al-Shabaab has added a new layer of instability on top of rocketing prices, youth unemployment and anxiety about the Elections next year.  Then there are the personal crises of money or malaria or muggings or the mortuary.  There is plenty to be fearful about.

Psalm 46 gives us the worst-case-scenario.  Like something out of a disaster movie the earth gives way and the mountains are thrown into the heart of the sea.  And yet, ‘we will not fear.’  Extraordinary!  How can you not fear when everything falls apart?  ‘God is our refuge and strength,  a very present help in trouble.’  Ok – but what does that actually mean?  Is it just vague religious sentiment?  What does it actually look like for God to be our refuge and strength and help?  How does that work?  The rest of Psalm 46 tells us:

• The pleasures of the Lord – ‘There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God’.  It is very hard to be glad and fearful at the same time.  The joy of the Lord is our strength.  Our greatest defence is a wholehearted delight in the person of the Lord Jesus, the fountain of living waters.
• The presence of the Lord – We are ‘the holy habitation of the Most High, God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.’  Twice we are told, ‘The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.’  We need our eyes opened as the servant of Elisha at Dothan to see the defences of the Lord of hosts.  And even more than that we need our eyes opened to the Lord of hosts himself present with us – Emmanuel – who through his incarnation and death and resurrection and Spirit has bound himself to us in the strongest possible way – a unity equal to the unity of the persons of the Trinity.  He is more strongly present to us than our own consciousness or limbs – he will never leave us or forsake us for all eternity.
• The promise of the Lord – ‘God will help her when morning dawns.’  It might not be according to our timing but there is a firm pledge that God will help us.  The darkness is not oblivion – it is night and night is always followed by dawn.  There was a foretaste of dawn in Ezra’s day.  The first rays of dawn broke powerfully into the darkness as the Light walked this earth.  There are victories and small dawns for us in our day – thank God.  But the full rising of the Son is yet to come – and it will certainly come.
• The power of the Lord – ‘He utters his voice, the earth melts.’  Awesome awesome power.  I can’t make a candle melt by talking to it.  This is the Creator talking to his creation.  He made the universe by his word and one day he will melt it by his word.  And in the meantime he is working powerfully by his Word, melting kingdoms, melting the bonds of the world, the flesh and the devil.
• The perspective of the Lord – ‘Come’, the psalmist says, ‘Look at the world from the Lord’s perspective.’  Everything that you read when you open your paper, all the rising and falling of nations – these are ‘the works of the LORD.’  We do not believe in two gods – one who sends good and one who sends bad.  We believe in one triune God who is totally sovereign.  ‘He has brought desolations on the earth.’  He determines when wars start and wars cease.  Even the pagan dictators of the world are (unwittingly) his servants – tools in his hands.
• The pre-eminence of the Lord – ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’  This isn’t a gentle encouragement to meditation.  This is the cry of a warrior; the cry of the King who has been defied too long; the command of the Creator to his creatures; the rebuke of the Lord Jesus to the raging storm.  One day, despite how things look right now, despite the convulsion in Africa, despite the godlessness of Euope, despite all the raging of the nations, “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”  That truth is our joy, our confidence, our refuge and strength.