Ps 46 and Modern Grief

The Psalmist who first uttered what is now Psalm 46 was one smart cookie. Psalm 46 was, if I recall, what was on the lips of Peter A. and me as our hospice patient took her last breath on graduation day from CPE. Even if I don't remember it right, it has managed to find a special place in my heart due to my fond, if fake, recollection of that moment.

As my community here deals with its grief over the loss of a beloved member of our family and as it is the Psalm for Sunday, I was drawn back again to its soothing words in the midst of great trial. What hit me today as Keith and I talked through the Psalm was how it fits our modern life so well. As someone nears death family comes from everywhere. Once they actually pass to the next life, more family descends, and the flurry of activity begins; burial service planning, coordination with the funeral home, feeding the masses, celebrating a life lived, mourning a life gone, calls to newspapers, credit card companies, life insurance checks, and on and on. "Though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." Life gets so busy.

And then it stops. Family leaves. Coordination ends. Phone calls slow. Sympathy cards don't arrive. The silence becomes deafening. The waves of grief are still strong, but the buoy of business is now gone. Now what? Life goes on all around, but what if we aren't ready? What if this next wave topples us over? "Be still, then..." We are left with some options. We can "be still, then, and know... God." or we can be still and be left alone, trying to fill our grief with all sorts of other things, all sorts of unhealthy things.

The Psalmist knew the better way. When it gets so quiet that all we can hear is our grief, sit still, and know God; the one who is with us, who is our refuge and our strength.

I don't know if the Psalmist knew the business that comes with a death and the quiet that comes all too quickly thereafter. I do know that Psalm 46 hits life in 21st century America on the head. Now, will we choose to seek God in the still?