From Jim McGuiggan... PSALM 46 & EARTHQUAKES

PSALM 46 & EARTHQUAKES

 Ancient Jews weren't scared witless by the sea but there was enough about it that generated unease in them when they looked at it. Whatever else Genesis 1 taught them, it taught them that God was the Lord of the waters and everything else that existed. He spoke and it obeyed him (see also Isaiah 17:13-14). The sea was no god to be worshiped as it had been worshiped in Egypt, where they had spent so many years. Still, its restlessness, its destructive power and the fact that they couldn't control it were enough to make it a symbol of threat and chaos. They often spoke of it in those terms, as did other nations.

Isaiah said (17:12): "Oh, the raging of many nations—they rage like the raging sea! Oh, the uproar of the peoples—they roar like the roaring of great waters." Here the pounding of huge waves as they smash against one another with destroying force is a graphic picture of clashing armies. In their wickedness they never ceased to cast up muck and debris (Isaiah 57:20). It was out of the restless Great Sea (Mediterranean) that the four great Gentile kingdoms arose like monsters from a science fiction movie, devouring all before them and oppressing the people of God (Daniel 7:1-8). No wonder that when John describes the conditions of the world freed from the oppressor that he says of it (and there was no more sea)—Revelation 21:1.

With thoughts and images like these circulating in a little nation that—on and off— for centuries had felt the power of oppressors the psalmist's defiant words in 46:1-3 ring out all the finer and braver and more trustful. These words aren't sung by people who've known no trouble—they've known more than their share! These aren't the words of a people who think the world can be fixed if only we give them "enough information". This man speaks for his entire people who expect the world to be wild and oppressive and who know that either today or tomorrow they'll feel the hurt that powerful nations bring to others. Knowing all that, fully aware of all that, certain that it will come to that he says this:

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.

Picture this believer standing on top of the cliff, watching the huge waves building out there and then rushing for the cliff face with increasing speed and power. Imagine the shudder he feels in the ground when they thunder against it, again and again, unrelentingly, threatening to bring down the entire mountain and him along with it. Think of him, then, looking landward, to his home and people and the irresistible forces lined up against them. It's with all those images and realities in mind that he sings into the wind:

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.

This song is sung by modern believers as well. I know a few of them personally! They're intelligent, wide-eyed, politically aware, as realistic as anyone you could meet and when they feel the shudder under their feet they shrug and get on with their business of world-transformation by "gospeling," in all the ways that they do that.

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.