Be Still and Know

Psalm 88:1-3 O LORD, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. This is possibly the saddest of all the psalms. The psalmist c...

Psalm 86:11 Teach me your ways, O LORD, that I may live according to your truth! I wonder what your school teachers were like. I suspect that we all had a wide range of experiences. Some of my teachers were strict, others were encouraging, a few...

Psalm 86:8 No pagan god is like you, O Lord. None can do what you do! There have always been lots of gods on offer. A god is anything that calls for our commitment and devotion, and in every age, there has been a colourful variety of options. I onc...

Psalm 86:5 O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help. Sooner or later, everything breaks down. Whether you are thinking of your health, car, bicycle, microwave, computer, vacuum cleaner...

Psalm 86:1 Bend down, O LORD, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help. Finding peace and purpose in our lives is something that we all want, and the first step to achieving it is recognising that we need God’s help. David, the author o...

Psalm 85:8 I listen carefully to what God the LORD is saying, for he speaks peace to his faithful people. Listening is crucial to every part of life, but that doesn’t mean it is a simple process. It requires a huge amount of thought and care, so i...

Psalm 84:10 A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked. I wonder if you’ve ever experienced homesickness. I certain...

Psalm 82:3-4 Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people. When I was in my 20s, I lived in an Indian village for a year. I...

Psalm 81:10-11 “For it was I, the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around.” We probably all know the feelin...

Psalm 80:19 Turn us again to yourself, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved. When someone looks at us with their full attention and warmth, it tells us everything we need to know – that we ar...

Psalm 78:2-4 I will teach you hidden lessons from our past – stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the...

Galatians 6:18 Dear brothers and sisters, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. The story of John Newton is well known. He first went to sea with his father when he was eleven years old and soon became deeply involved in...

Galatians 6:17 I bear on my body the scars that show I belong to Jesus. Alan Paton wrote a book called [itals]Cry, the Beloved Country[end itals] (Vintage) and was a fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa. He once wrote about his death: “When...

Galatians 6:14 As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was clearly a lot of boasting going on among the Galatians! There were those who boasted of the fact that they continued to keep the Jewish...

Galatians 6:7-8 Don’t be misled – you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please t...