Day 22 – Issue 14

Be Still Know

Psalm 57:1 NLT

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy! I look to you for protection. I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until the danger passes by.

I have the reputation of overreacting when under pressure. Before I even consider making a considered response to an unwelcome situation, I can immediately flare up and perceive and paint life in catastrophic terms. Over the years, this has damaged good friends who haven’t experienced such reaction before and naturally have no stomach for future encounters. In my younger years, I attacked wardrobes and broke many a phone.

In reality, every fibre of my being was reacting to the difficulty, danger or disappointment I encountered. As such, I increased in volume while my actions grew erratic and unpredictable. Without wishing in any way to excuse such behaviours, they reflected the fact that I drew upon my own resources rather than God’s to manage any unwanted situation. How might I have coped were I to face deportation, imprisonment, famine or flood, as so many disaster-struck people do?

Self-evidently I was incapable of living God’s way under pressure, something that was tested to the ultimate in the early years of Katey’s MS. I needed to find refuge, first from myself, and then a place to consider how best to respond to all the challenges encroaching upon my space. That refuge, the psalmist reminds us, is always in God. Yet, the very nature of the crisis drove me deeper into myself and away from God.

A refuge is accommodation for those at risk of harm from others or from themselves. God is that accommodation, and our responsibility is to seek to find the path to God’s door.

I first need to recognise that I need to take refuge before I can ever begin the process of pursuing God, who is my refuge in every storm of life.

QUESTION: Are you thrown off-track when life overwhelms you, or can you take refuge in God?

PRAYER: O God of mercy, in the midst of life’s storms, will you be my refuge?