"Have It Your Way"
My mom was recently telling me a story about one of her first students. She was a young first-grade teacher in Simpsonville, Kentucky, a small rural community outside Louisville. Charlie was one of her students. Like many others, he had not gone to kindergarten, so this year marked his official introduction to the alphabet. When Charlie learned to write his name, he spelled it with an uppercase, backwards r. Several times, my mom explained the proper way to write a lowercase r. But Charlie continued to write the r uppercase and backwards. Finally, one day when my mom was explaining the proper way to write an r, Charlie looked up at her in exasperation and said, "Miss Kruschwitz…it's my name, I can write it however I want to!"
Chances are you've encountered a similar obstinance in a young one yourself. It's not uncommon for toddlers and young children to have a bossy streak in them. They see the world around them as their own little kingdom and expect to get their way. (As my dad likes to joke about my nephews, "They love you and have a wonderful plan for your life!")
I wonder if we don't all have a little bit of Charlie in us. Sure, we learn at an early age that we won't always get what we want, but that doesn't stop our wanting it. We just learn to be a bit more subtle in our attempts to control things. There's a reason why our advertisements declare things like "Have it your way" and "Obey your thirst." We all desire to do things our way. We all desire control and certainty.
A Different Kind of King
Today's psalm envisions God as a victorious king. As "kingdoms totter" and nations unravel (Ps 46:6), God declares with a noble solemnity, "I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in [all] the earth" (Ps 46:10). It's easy to hear this and imagine an all-powerful God in the heavens, pulling strings and bringing everything under his control, a God who has it his way. But if we pay close attention to the opening verses, we get a different picture. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though"—and this is the crucial word—"though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult" (Ps 46:2-3). The psalmist declares that God is a refuge and a strength and a help—not to say that God is in control, but to say that even as the world spins out of control, God is with us, helping us to live well, giving us strength to endure.
Already, then, we catch a glimpse of a different kind of king. This is not a king who reigns over the world outside us, who imposes his dominion by force. His reign looks different. Notice what the psalmist says. Twice he insists our king is with us. So, to begin, his reign is not so much about power over the world but presence with us.
And his presence is disarming. What's fascinating to me about this psalm is what God changes. God does not change the circumstances around us. As the psalmist reminds us in the beginning, God is our help, not as insurance that the world will never spin out of control, but as a faithful companion who helps us even as it spins out of control. What God does change is our hearts. The real realm of God's dominion is not without but within. "Come, behold the works of the Lord…He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire" (Ps 46:9). God does not control the world without, where mountains and seas and kingdoms and nations continue to tremble and roar. Rather, God reigns over the world within. God disarms the hearts of humans. In God's presence, wars are ended, weapons are destroyed.
In fact, the most famous verse in this psalm is all about this disarmament. "Be still" comes from a Hebrew world which literally means "drop," as in "Drop what you're holding." Another English expression that captures this sense well is "Let go."
The picture that emerges from this psalm is surreal. Our God is a king whose strength and help is not control and certainty (what we would all prefer) but rather acceptance and trust. "Let go", God says, "as I have let go."
“I Am with You”
I'll be honest. That interpretation by itself might seem fanciful or a bit of a stretch. But there's a key to it that I haven't mentioned yet: Jesus. We Christ-followers believe that "in [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col 1:19). In other words, if you want to know who God is…look at Jesus. Jesus shows us what God's kingdom looks like in the flesh. And over the course of his life, Jesus "let go" of a lot. He does not climb the ladder, he descends it. He lets go of power, possessions, home, dignity, and even his very life.
And lest we think of letting go as a form of resignation or masochism, we might appreciate that Jesus' letting go was not suffering for the sake of suffering, but simply a demonstration of what love looks like. Love lets go because it trusts in God's power, which is a power of the heart. It trusts that redemption and restoration happen not by bow or spear or shield (cf. Ps 46:9), but by faithful relationship. The biggest form of help that God offers us, and that we can offer others, is really simple. It is saying, "I am with you. I love you." We see this power every day in the unsung saints of our world, mothers and fathers, teachers and nurses, strangers who take the time to look into our eyes and friends who sit with us through unbearable times.
"I am with you. I love you." This is the gospel at its core. The rest is commentary. This is the good news that Jesus, our king, proclaims as he lets go of everything en route to the cross. It is not the promise that we will have things our way, but rather the immeasurably better promise that we are never alone, no matter the difficult reality we face. It is not power over the world around us, it is even more powerful: it is the power to heal what is broken, to restore what is lost, to reconcile what has been divided.
"I am with you. I love you." This is our refuge and our strength, stronger than any earthquake or flood, stronger than bow, spear, shield—even stronger than death itself, if you would believe it.
Prayer
Our refuge and our strength,Our help amid change and difficulty,
O Christ—you are our king.
Reign in our hearts,
And disarm us of fear, hate, and our need for control
…
Recalibrate our hearts
To your simple way
Of togetherness.
May we know that your presence and love
Can do what no sword can do,
Can heal, restore, and raise to new life.
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