“Be still and know that I am God.” -Psalm 46:10a. Most who read their Bible regularly and have taken time to memorize passages would immediately tell you they know where this is in the Bible and have heard it from time to time. I find it surprising that this is one passage we as a society in America (and possibly just western civilization) fail to encounter and practice due to the noise of this world we have created due to social media, world news, and fast-pace societies that never seem to show any signs of slowing down. It seems as if our culture dictates us to believing that if we slow down and do nothing that we are missing out and not accomplishing anything. I feel strongly to disagree with this notion; I would argue that many things are accomplished in being still, in silence, and in meditation than there is in immediate actions. We will dive into a perspective that I feel satisfies and enriches our walk as believers of our triune God and all He has to offer to us based on what we see in this passage and what we can learn from this Psalmist.
Now let us put into context what this whole Psalm is telling us about God. He is stating on the mighty power of God through the whole passage and shows examples of His power such as the power to make wars cease (v.9) and have all the nations bow down to Him alone. The author is going into very deep, descriptive, and dogmatic detail about God’s sovereignty that makes it easier for many of us to grasp as human beings. This is how he starts with these verses and it is also how he ends it. But the very major and attention-grabing sentence all starts in verse 10. He tells us that God is making a statement to “be still and know that I am God.”
Notice how this statement comes near the ending of this Psalm? It seems to be very intentional that it was written there specifically for all of us. Why is that? It makes sense that the author wrote it in this part of the Psalm because he is trying to help us realize an encompassing truth regarding all the he proclaims about our God; he is making this statement in verse 10 most likely because He wants us to reflect and see that anything that happens can not happen without Yahweh’s approval and sovereign authority over things. It is placed there to help us realize the verses before would not have happened without God at work at all. If He did not have the power to do so, He would cease to even be God logically, metaphysically, and epistemologically. The author of this Psalm is challenging us to stop and ponder on our God and even the works of His creation. But that is harder to do for us in American and many Western countries. We are so ingrained on thinking about the next big thing or have our minds cluttered around everything else that we do not discipline ourselves to stop (or be still as the psalmist says).
The first action was centered around us pondering on many things. The next thing that we see the psalmist point out in doing is to “know.” This is not fully different from being still but has some areas of contrast. One reason it is different to some degree in nature is what the definition of the word, know, is. To know is to hold to the belief of something with full confidence after observing and recognizing absolute truths from your observations. The Psalmist recognized this truth He observed just from being still and stopping to reflect and think critically.
This is something we miss to do regularly in the U.S. We do not fare well with taking time to be still. We are a fast-paced society and I believe this has come to hurt us. There are plenty examples of this being a negative effect on many: Anxiety and depression is big on this generation more than any we have known, people are quick to see what is going on in social media the moment they wake up instead of just giving themselves time to wake up and cognitively be more aware of their surroundings, and we even struggle to read for even a long period of time and are more entertained with just seeing animations on a screen. This is not to bash those things in general and call them evil. We have just lost focus and knowing there is a time and place to use those things as well as think over things and being still. We have ran away from doing both of those. As Christians, this is important for many of us to bring back into our culture. Reason why is not only will this help us in our social lives, but also as well with our spiritual lives.
I challenge many of you as well as I: What is something you can do to help you bring back this discipline in your life? What do you need to give up or even cut down on in your involvement in this world today so that you may be able to make Psalm 46:10a ring true to your life as God commands us to do- “Be still and know that I am God.”
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