OUR FORTRESS

Psalm 46 also acknowledges the reality of human disasters—such things as political instability, clashing empires, wars, and violence. “Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts” (Psalm 46:6). Like the implacable forces and disasters in the natural world, the tides of civilizations and the atrocities of the powerful have similarly destructive effects on human lives, impassive about the toll they take on the weakest, poorest, and most vulnerable. Amid these realities of human history, God is a refuge and our fortress (see Psalm 46:7, 11). He alone can bring peace. His power is greater than all the armies, weapons, war machines, and nefarious technologies that humanity can assemble, invent, or stockpile.

When we look back over the victims and devastation of war and violence, even just in recent decades, it can feel overwhelming to our humanity and our hope. But the assurance offered repeatedly in the Psalms—and elsewhere in the Bible—is that the scale of the evils and outrages of humanity are always dwarfed by the reality and power of God.

Even when His power is not yet fully exercised or realized, the assurance of God undermines the enormity of evil. While we do not know the specific circumstances that inspired this psalm, God is the fortress that the psalmists had found and that they now offered to those who would sing their song. Even amid the tragedies and disasters of our world, their assurance was found in pausing to remember the reality of God and His supremacy over the nations and all the earth. “He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth’ ” (Psalm 46:10). Whatever you are confronting this week, whatever is on your news feed today, whatever is making you feel afraid or uncertain, be still and know that He is God.