Be Still While the Earth Moves: What This Changes Between Us

The foyer still has two versions of the same refuge sentence. Last month this church said we will take refuge after a named week went public between a household that still has to live under moving ground and a row that already printed God is our refuge. One person received that sentence as cover. The chairs around them received a quieter version by Tuesday: keep the roar indoor, because nobody has to sit next to it.

A neighbor two seats over is deciding whether this church can occupy a moving earth together without keeping an unofficial private-refuge rule between them, or whether one indoor closed hour writes the public life the rest of you have to live under.

This is a sermon about what Psalm 46 changes between you. If you preach it as a map of anyone's private panic, you will lie. If you preach it as a community pep talk that never lets a moving earth occupy air a second chair 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.