The Very Present Help

Psalm 46:1-3 [English Standard Version]

1 God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

Most people who live long enough face times when they feel their world collapse under them. This is such a terribly broken world that horror and pain come to all of us. If you don't know what I'm talking about, wait a little longer. It'll make sense eventually.

I don't mean to be depressing - just realistic. The world we live in is messed up, and awful things happen all around us all the time. Sometimes they touch us very personally. When that happens to you, I think your going through the kind of life event that the psalmist is writhing about here. "Though the earth gives way" he says. I've felt the earth give way. I've been through times in my life where things seemed to be fine, and then suddenly I'm in a ruined heap.

What do those times look like? It's different for everyone. Death of someone you love will often take the ground from beneath you. A lost pregnancy. A lost job. A church split is a big one. A slide back into addiction or the threat of it - the emotional pull that comes out of nowhere so unexpectedly and threatens to rip you apart. Unexpected illness - to hear that you have cancer will make you wonder if there is any solid ground anywhere. A relationship collapse - a divorce will tear the ground under the parents of the divorcing people, the children in the broken family, and separating spouses themselves. Or even something trivial like an undeserved chew out session from an angry boss.

When the world collapses under us, our typical first reaction is to complain and to wonder why. Why did this terrible thing happen to me, we wonder, as if I am special, and should be exempt from all the junk of the broken world. Why indeed. Why should it happen to other people and not to me? Somehow, I don't think of that question when life comes tumbling in on me.

Or else we just shut down. Our hearts fill up with fear and our minds lock up. If life can be this uncertain, what can I depend on? God didn't protect me from this - what else will he let fall on me?

What this psalm is trying to do to us is to redirect us when life does tumble in on us. To remind us that complaint and fear are not our only options.

When life gets so hard that it seems that there is no high ground to which we can run, when it seems that even the mountains have been swept away in the flood and the ground is no longer there to stand on - we can either react with terror and complaint or with faith and trust.

The words that are most encouraging in these verses are "very present help." It isn't just that he's there - he's really, really there! When trouble comes, and life gets as bad as it can get, and then it gets a little bit worse, don't you find that you become more aware of Him? Do you find that you look for him more when you are desperate for him?

I know I do. When I've been through really bad times, when nothing in my life seemed to be going well or to make sense, when I've soaked my pillow with tears at night, when the world around me has gone gray like someone turned down all the colors and I find myself trying to remember what it was like to laugh, in those bad times I find that I grow more in my faith, that I open myself up more to God.

And in those times, I find God to be safe.

When all else is bad, God is not. No matter how upset I am, He can handle all my pettiness, my pain, my raging heart. My hurt pours into Him, and what might really hurt someone else is simply gone when I give it to Him. And in the emptiness I find peace.

He is a refuge from the broken world - a safe place to go and find peace when my life has no peace.

He is strength when all my strength is gone. When life has exhausted me and I cannot go on any more, He is the one who makes it possible for me to go on. Why is it that so often I have to get all the way to exhausted before I turn to Him?

In the worst times of my life, He has been there. I have never faced a hard time alone. Even when I wasn't looking for Him, I can look back and see his influence. Even when I was looking for Him and couldn't see Him at the time, I can see His work later and know that He was there with me.

When the world falls away underneath you, run to the refuge. He is very present and wants to help you.