Help Is Available When Going Gets Tough

What do we do when faced with a crisis? Go into panic mode? Put the kettle on? Phone a friend? Everyone has their own way of dealing with emergencies, whether big or small. Newspapers and magazines are full of stories about people who get caught up in serious and life-threatening situations. We can only wonder how they survived to tell the tale, and thank God that it wasn’t us.

The writer of Psalm 46 had his fair share of troubles and disasters. Like us, he lived in turbulent and uncertain times. Unlike us, he didn’t have the benefits of modern technology to update him when circumstances had improved.

The one sure and constant thing in his life was the awareness he had of his Creator. It was this that enabled him to say with confidence: ‘God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging’ (Psalm 46:1-3 New International Version).

The psalms were written by ordinary people who voiced their feelings of joy, sorrow, frustration, anger and fear. Their circumstances and lifestyle may have been very different from ours, but their feelings and honest reactions were not. That’s why their words often speak volumes at life’s big occasions, such as weddings and funerals.

Bad things such as earthquakes and floods do happen. They always will. We can’t understand or explain them or make them go away any more than we can always understand why friends fall out, relationships break down or families separate.

The psalm writer puts these things in perspective, asserting: ‘The Lord Almighty is with us… He says, “Be still, and know that I am God’” (46:7, 10). In other words, we would do well to concentrate on appreciating the positives, rather than bemoaning the negatives. God hasn’t left us. He is in control.

UK & Ireland War Cry 12 July 2014