God or Fear?

Psalm 46 is one of my favorite pieces of Scripture because it contains one of the first verses I ever memorized, “He says, ‘Be still and know that I AM God.’” (10) But this morning I was grabbed by the first 3 verses,

1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging…

What struck me was the structure…it seems like a fragment…an incomplete thought…(sorry, I am a grammar enthusiast : ) But seriously, the way verses 2 and 3 read leave them hanging, almost as if there is something missing… When you read them, you are like, “yeah, yeah…though all these scary stuff may happen and our worlds may be destroyed…what? WHAT?” It needs an ending! It needs to reiterate the initial affirmation about how “we will not fear” because by the end of verse 3, we’ve already forgotten it!

Maybe it’s just me…but I don’t see verse 4 as a logical next sentence to go after verse 3:

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.

Once again…it is possibly entirely just me. But this morning, after I read this passage I felt as if God in His infinite Wisdom inspired the Psalmist to structure the verses this way as an invitation for those who would read them to finish the thought by personalizing them with their own stories and struggles. I see it as a ‘fill in the blanks’ type of exercise where we are to complete the sentence on our own. It is our choice. We choose how we are going to deal with such catastrophes as illustrated in the verses.

Are we going to reiterate the initial statement and affirm: “ Therefore we will not fear…?” Or once we see the earth giving way, the mountains falling, the waters roaring and foaming and everything quaking we’ll choose to crumble as well and be swallowed up by the pit of darkness and hopelessness? 

What we do is up to us. The answer to the “what, what?” is in us. It is our choice.

God, Himself, tells us what to do, “Be still and let me be God!” Translation: “DO NOT BE AFRAID!” Though all these horrible and terrifying things are possibly going to happen to you, “I AM your Refuge and Strength, your ever-present help in times of trouble.  TRUST ME!” 

 The decision to believe His Word, however, remains in us. The choice is ours. What are we going to choose? God or fear?