In our own times of turmoil (what times aren’t?), the need for security seems acute. Without security, there can be no creativity, no nurturing, no healing. But where do we obtain security? Remember Henry Kissinger’s line, “Each success only buys a ticket to a more difficult problem.” That seems to be true. True security is elusive, and it does not come in this life in an ultimate sense.
Still, is it not possible to be secure even in the midst of the storm of history? The composer of Psalm 46 thought so. This little psalm of trust, part of the collection of the Korahite guild of psalm singers, expresses unqualified confidence in Elohim, “our refuge and strength.” God becomes a sort of fortress for the singer, replacing all other possible sources of security, even if those sources might be employed by God. If you’re like me, and a bit tired of religious people being society’s most vocal critics and naysayers (and conflating their faith with a sort of crude social Darwinism), the hopefulness of this psalm offers an antidote to cynicism and self-indulgent criticism of others. “We will not fear” amid earthquake (the psalmist uses the metaphor of the moving earth to symbolize the pain of social and even psychic upheaval that human beings may face). This is so because of the existence of the “river that makes Elohim’s city [Jerusalem, presumably] rejoice.”
The contrast of two ecological forces, earthquake and river, which in other texts may both symbolize God’s mighty power, here serves a slightly different purpose. The reference to the river, which does not exist on any map (no rivers in Jerusalem!) but does exist in the mental maps of ancient peoples as a feature of the Garden of God, allows the psalmist to compare Jerusalem to Eden. God, the psalmist says, provides a level of security for the righteous comparable to that experienced by the first humans in Paradise. That’s the metaphor in play in the middle of this psalm.
Of course, the psalmist (and all the rest of us) can look at Jerusalem or any other place on Planet Earth and recognize immediately that we do not literally live in Paradise. Anyone who imagines that we live in the best of all possible worlds clearly has a shortage of imagination! Still…. The psalmist believes that there is a sense in which God’s presence will lead to the cessation of warfare, the breaking of weapons. When that happens, anyone who is paying attention will hear the divine revelation, “Be still, and know that I am God.” God’s mighty deeds of peacemaking lead to an awareness of God’s true nature, and thus our own.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we were secure enough to believe all that? Maybe someday….