Be Still and Know

The Storm

This psalm names a specific, active instruction, be still, worth noticing this is not passive default but genuine, deliberate choice, an active stopping of striving, worth holding against however much your own response to overwhelm has involved increased frantic activity rather than this described, deliberate stillness.

Notice know that I am God, the specific content this stillness is meant to produce, not empty, blank stillness for its own sake, but stillness that allows this genuine knowing, God’s own actual identity and authority, to actually be perceived, worth trusting as stillness’s genuine purpose, not merely its own empty absence of activity.

This is worth examining against however much your own instinct in genuine overwhelm has been to strive harder, do more, control more, rather than this psalm’s own counter-instinctive instruction, be still, trusting that this deliberate stopping actually produces genuine knowing that frantic striving alone genuinely cannot.

Whatever overwhelm currently tempts you toward increased frantic activity, practice today this deliberate stillness instead, be still, and know, trusting this psalm’s own claim that genuine knowledge of who God actually is comes specifically through this stillness, not through whatever additional striving overwhelm otherwise produces.