Be Still — The City That Cannot Be Shaken

(Psalm 46)

The people who first sang this song
had felt the ground move under their feet.
The mountains, the strong old mountains,
the ones that were supposed to stand forever,
slid down into the heaving sea.
The waters roared. The waters foamed.
Everything that was meant to hold still
would not hold still.

Maybe you know that feeling too.
When the big people talk in low, worried voices.
When the floor of your tummy drops.
When something you were sure would always stay
suddenly does not stay.

And right in the middle of it, they sang:

God is our safe place.
God is our hiding place.
When everything shakes, he does not shake.
And so we will not be afraid,
no, not even then.

There is a city in this song.
And running through the middle of the city, a river.
A glad river,
flowing soft and sure
while the world outside is loud.
Do you remember the thirsty deer,
longing for the running stream?
Here is stream enough for a whole city.
The river makes the city glad,
because God himself lives there.
He is right in the middle of her.
She will not fall.

Picture it:
the mountains crashing down,
but the river still flowing.
The kingdoms shouting and shoving,
but God has only to speak,
and the noise lies down like a tired child.

Then God himself says:

"Be still.
Be still, and know that I am God."

Not "be still because nothing is wrong,"
but "be still, because I am here.
I am holding all of it.
And I am not afraid of any of it."

The LORD of angel armies is with us,
close as breath.

And little one,
that was a promise God had not finished keeping yet.

Because one day God came down
into the very middle of his people,
not only to a city of stone,
but as a baby, warm and small,
with a name that means God-with-us.
Jesus.
The river of gladness, walking on two feet.
The safe place you could reach out and touch.

The mountains still shake sometimes.
Your world still wobbles sometimes.
But the city has already begun.
Jesus has started building it inside his people,
inside you,
the way a river runs deep beneath a field,
even while the old world roars on.
A home where no one is afraid.
A family where not one child is missing.

It has begun.
And a day is coming
when the wobbling stops for good,
the river runs clear and bright forever,
and you look up and see
that the One in the middle of everything
was holding you all along.

Be still.
He is here.