Calm in Chaos
Psalm 46 presents to us something like two cities, an earthly one and a heavenly one. Consider the contrast between verses 3 and 4:
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. Selah
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
In the opening verses, we have a picture of natural chaos, perhaps a tidal wave covering a mountain. There are few more fearful prospects than a lahar, a mudslide created when the lava from a volcano melts the ice caps of a mountain, sweeping away whole towns and villages below. We aren’t sure what the Psalmist is getting at by speaking of an underwater mountain. Perhaps the Psalm is best viewed as two cities. After all, it was written in a time when armies would lay siege to cities, surrounding them, and cutting them off from food and water until they were able to enter and conquer its weakened inhabitants. There’s a transition from the chaos to calmness in verse 4. The picture is of a happy city—a city with a river and flowing streams. In a siege, what would be more of a comfort than a water source, along its attending fish to feed those who are shut in? A city with a river isn’t easily besieged.
Perhaps the Psalmist wants us to view the beginning of this famous Psalm as picture of something like the city of man and the city of God. Of earth and of a new earth. One is marked by chaos, the other by calmness. We now live in the city of man—there’s no escaping the chaos. But it’s hope in that second city, where God is fully manifest, that gives us peace now. Do you see it? Those who trust in a God who is close in the chaos, can have peace now. Part of being calm in the chaos is both trusting in the nearness of a God we cannot see, and looking in hope to that future city, where we will see Him.
How can we “be still and know that I am God” (verse 10)? How do we know that God has come? One will complain that we’ve never seen him. But He has come. That’s the wonder of incarnation. We are reminded by our Christmas festivities that He will come again to bring us into that unshakable city, because he came into the chaos the first time. We can be still because Jesus took upon himself the chaos of our sin on the cross. Will He not then finish the job? Of course He will.
