Trust in God, who is our refuge and strength | Clergy Corner

Twenty years ago, following the 9/11 attacks, we found ourselves in utter despair, our sense of peace and security shattered. We felt vulnerable as perhaps never before in our lives.

The Sunday after 9/11 I read Psalm 46. It speaks of cataclysmic events like earthquakes and raging floodwaters. It speaks of chaos, of the world-changing on us.

On 9/11/2001, our world did change…plunging us into chaos. We no longer felt as safe as we once did in this country.

The chaos Psalm 46 describes is all too familiar, but the psalm is also confident chaos need not ever be the last word in our lives or world. The psalm points us toward a faithful path into a hopeful future.

The psalm immediately issues a strong and clear call to trust in this God who is our refuge and strength, a very present (and well-proven) help in time of trouble. The psalmist knew from experience, and from the experience of others, that God is a present and proven source of help every moment of every day…including the chaotic and tragic days.

We trust that this well-proven, help-bringing God is at work in our chaotic times, but also at work in all times to help us become the fully loving persons God created us to be.

When life is coming apart, when the world changes on us, we can trust that God is still present, still at work in this world. Trust in God is a key to the faithful path we are called to walk in this post-9/11 age.

The psalm also calls us to get ourselves right smack in the middle of the river of God, that runs through all of our living. Verse four declares, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God….  God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved….”

Rivers are a source of life and thus a symbol of the life, love, grace, peace, comfort, joy, and aliveness God’s presence brings.  God’s presence and love and grace are the river…and that river flows through every city, every place traumatized by 9/11…including our own.

We step into the middle of that river and let the life of God flow through us.

The psalm also reminds us that God is good at working with chaos as raw material. Genesis one says that what existed before God began creating was chaos, churning waters where life couldn’t get a foothold? But out of that watery chaos, God created a beautiful, fertile world where life, including human life, flourishes.

God is still able to take the rubble of our 9/11 tragedy…or any tragedy…and bring out of it something good. The faithful path includes trusting God’s ability to work with chaos.

And then the psalmist invites us to be still and know that God is God, still with us, still our refuge and strength.

Now, this “be still” is not a call to inaction, but a call to quiet ourselves so we can act out of a steady trust instead of a frantic panic.  It’s a call to live centered in God’s love, trusting God has not given us over to chaos.

And, of course, all of our faith traditions remind us that love and mercy are central to the faithful path.

We hear words like blessed are the merciful, extend hospitality to strangers, live in harmony with one another, love your neighbor as yourself.

On 9/11, as a very nervous Muslim mother shepherded her children out the door headed for school, her neighbor, one of our church members, walked over to her and said, “What beautiful children you have.”  Those kind, loving words calmed that mom’s fears and sparked a twenty-year friendship between those Christian and Muslim neighbors.

At this twentieth anniversary of 9/11, if we are still looking for a way forward, there it is. That very old path offered by the psalmist and by Jesus is still the way forward for us living in 2021 — trust God and love neighbors…it’s always the way forward into the peace God wills for us all.