Be still, and know
Stillness isn’t the absence of problems — it’s a decision to stop striving long enough to remember who is actually in charge. This psalm was written amid roaring waters and shaking mountains, not in a quiet room.
“Know that I am God” is the point of the stillness. We don’t rest because everything is fine; we rest because the One holding everything is not us, and never was.
Lord, I put down what I’ve been trying to control. Make me still enough to remember that You are God, and I am held. Amen.
רָפָה (raphah (rah-FAH)). The root behind “be still.” It means to sink down, let go, or drop your hands, which is closer to “stop striving” than “be quiet.”
Psalm 46 is a psalm of the sons of Korah. It’s often tied to Jerusalem’s rescue from the Assyrian army in Hezekiah’s day, and it inspired Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress.”
David Brainerd, missionary to Native Americans in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, died at age 29 in the home of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards’ biography of him later inspired William Carey and many others to go.