9. God is our Refuge

A Meditation of Psalm 46

Let us remember a time when we felt really bad.  We were scared, depressed, and hopeless.  We felt like there is nobody to help us, and so we wanted to end this meaningless life.  Let us try to remember what happened, what caused it, and how we overcame the situation.

Psalm 46 is about such a situation.  The poet felt very bad in a certain situation. He felt scared, depressed and hopeless.  Let us find out from the psalm how he overcame the situation. 

We see a key word in vs. 1-- trouble. Trouble is an abstract idea.  Let us try to picture trouble by giving it a shape, size and color.  In verses 2--3, we see a picture of trouble in metaphorical language. When we feel bad, scared, and depressed, we feel like being in the midst of a hurricane, and we feel like the earth is moving away from under our feet.

We see another key word in verse 1-- help.  Let us think of a time when we helped someone, or someone helped us.  Here in this poem, the poet emphatically says that we will not be afraid in the midst of the worst trouble (vs. 2-3). Looking back at vs. 1-3 we find out what gives the poet such courage-- God is our ever-present help.

The help from God is different from the help from someone else. God's help is available to anybody, for any kind of trouble, any time, and anywhere. The poet has used a metaphor to describe and explain God's help—fortress (vs. 7 and 11).  It is like a castle where you will be safe when the enemies come to attack you.  God is like a fortress that protects us from all the troubles that surround us. There is another word in vs. 1 with similar meaning-- refuge. We are familiar with the word "refugee", which means someone who seeks refuge or protection. 

If God is our ever-present help, why don't we seek God's help whenever we are in trouble? There can be only one reason -- we don't know God well enough to ask His help.  We don't ask help from strangers, do we? We need to know God better and better day after day in order to seek His help whenever we are in trouble.

How can we know God better?  The poet suggests a way to know God better -- Be still, and know that I am God (vs. 10). What do we mean by being still?  It has both a literal meaning and a metaphorical meaning. Literally it means keeping the body still without any movement. Metaphorically it means keeping the mind still without any movement of thoughts or feelings.  Keeping the mind still is usually called meditation.  If we look directly at the Sun, we cannot see it. We become blind. But we can see the reflection of Sun in a pool if the water remains still. Just like this, God cannot be seen directly, However, we can see the reflection of God in our mind if and only if the mind remains absolutely still without any kind of movement. Not only Christianity but almost all the other major religious traditions in the world tell us that God can be seen and known only with a pure heart and a clear mind.

Our mind needs a daily shower just like our body because it gets covered with dirt like excessive guilt feeling, anxiety, fear, hatred and jealousy.  Just as a child jumps onto the lap of his mother with all the dirt on his body, and the mother washes all the dirt off of his body, we need to present ourselves to God, our dear parent in heaven, as we are, with all the dirt. If we open up our heart totally to God, He will make us clean of all the dirt. 

An infant can't see very well just because he can't focus his eyes.  As he grows up, he tries day after day to focus better, and finally

he gains the ability to see very well. Similarly, our mind's eye needs focusing.  Meditation is basically an exercise to train our mind to focus.   If we can spend a few minutes every day to try to focus our mind by keeping it still, we will eventually be able to see an amazingly different world.

Back to Contents