Be Still While the Earth Moves: The Responsibility in the Room

The elder minutes still have last month's we-will-take-refuge sentence. God is our refuge sits on the packet, on the hospital card the chair signs, and on the last line of a visit that never occupied air this table had to keep together. Tuesday still sends a named household home with a private moving earth the chairs are not allowed to sit with in the same week.

A man two chairs down already received the public version of this oversight. The public version can quote the psalm. The public version can leave a casserole. The public version still treats a named collapse as indoor furniture nobody at this table has to occupy. If you preach Psalm 46 as a map of anyone's private panic, you will lie. If you preach it as a leadership poster that never lets a moving earth occupy air the chairs can still hear, you will lie in a different direction. Preach it as trust poetry that names a God who remains refuge while the earth changes.

Text

Hear Psalm 46, from the World English Bible: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we won’t be afraid, though the earth changes, though the mountains are shaken into the heart of the seas; though its waters roar and are troubled, though the mountains tremble with their swelling. Selah. There is a river, the streams of which make the city of God glad, the holy place of the tents of the Most High. God is within her. She shall not be moved. God will help her at dawn. The nations raged. The kingdoms were moved. He lifted his voice and the earth melted. Yahweh of Armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come, see Yahweh’s works, what desolations he has made on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.