Proper 4 (9)
June 1, 2008

Genesis 6:9-22; 7:24; 8:14-19; Psalm 46; Romans 1:16-17; 3:22-31; Matthew 7:21-29

I’ve asked Pam to write this week’s devotional.

One Saturday when we were living in New York, Dale and I awoke with the ground shaking under our bed. The freeze which was on the other side of our bedroom wall was banging against the wall. We thought the freezer was on it last leg. It was not until our children came to our door and announced we had an earthquake. Psalm 46 talks about the One we can go to when it seems like our lives — our are experiences — seem to make our world shake. The psalmist tells us it is God who is our help in times of trouble. I know for the past 6 months my life has been shaking out of control. There haves been times as I drink a Diet Coke that I wondered if something stronger would take away the pain and trouble. By the way, I would never find out. It is so easy for people to do things or put our faith in other people then God. The interesting thing is this chapter is my favorite chapter in the Bible and I totally forgot its promise.

The psalmist goes on and talks about God’s power. Sometime we forget that God is powerful because we want to do it on our own. God is powerful enough to take care of all our problems, not just the big ones. He can take care of the little ones like finding the cell phone that we lost yesterday. The earthquake which we were in it did some damage further upstate, but did you know that every day there are hundreds of tremors that nobody feels.

If you do not get anything out of this, please remember this, “Be still and know I am God.” We need to get to know God’s voice before we go though troubling times. So when we are in those times and everything is crashing down on us and when it seems that there is no way out of the hole that we are in — We can hear the quiet voice of God telling us everything is going to be alright and he is there to put his loving arms around us.