September 2: Of Stillness and Broken Teeth

Ecclesiastes 1:1-3:22

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Psalm 46:1-11

Proverbs 22:15

After Psalm 23, today's reading - Psalm 46 - is probably my favorite, even thought its lessons are perhaps the hardest for me: Do not first do - first, I must trust.  

Trust is difficult.  We want assurances on our terms.  We want to know, to be certain that what we want is going to happen, what we fear is not.  We want it for ourselves, and - often even more desperately - we want it for those we love.  And yet the more we seek certainty about more and more things, the more we realize how impossible it is for us to achieve certainty on our own.  If you're like me, this doesn't go over very well, and you start stress eating during the day and clenching your jaw so tightly while you sleep you break two teeth.  

The psalm is interestingly written.  At the beginning, we see what kind of trouble a man might face - the earth giving way, the mountains falling into the sea.  At the end of it, we see what paltry, pathetically ineffective tools man has to deal with his problems - a spear, a shield, a bow.  It is my nature to take those tools and go do what I can, however futile my effort might be.  God tells me to do different - He takes those tools from me, and destroys them.  And He tells me not to do, but to trust.  My favorite verse: "He says, 'be still, and know that I am God."

He isn't telling me the problems aren't going to come.  He isn't even telling me the problems are going to be resolved the way I want them to be.  All He is saying is I should be still, turn to Him, and leave it to Him.  He's got this.

What worries you, what causes you to clench your jaw at night and break your teeth?  For me, it is my children - that, against every worldly influence, they grow into a woman and young men who know God, who see Him through the world's false promises, and who live their lives with Him.  From there, it is work, and even more broadly from there, it is the problems this country and my native country face.  And for those of you who have children, you know how increasingly ineffective our tools for raising them are, never mind controlling outcomes at work or in the rest of the world.  I need to learn to look to Him, and to leave it to Him.  Maybe then I won't give my dentist too much work.

Father: help us to know You and to trust You with all that troubles us.  Teach us to surrender what tools we might think we have, and to be still.