Where Can We Find Stability in an Unstable Time?
In the current climate of our country I feel my stability—my sense of peace, my rootedness—is buffeted continually by news about political unrest, threats to national security, and even reports of extreme weather. Like the devastated Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian, I feel as if my limbs are being stripped, my stability uprooted like the destroyed trees and buildings littered across the islands.
The future is unsure. We do not know what tomorrow may bring.
Overwhelmingly negative news affects me, I have learned. Being informed is crucial for many different reasons, but often the net effect of too much dark information leaves me depressed … even unsettled, weakened, my confidence in today wavering. I feel shaken and afraid.
My comfortable and somewhat predictable routine brings me comfort. Every day I trust the walls and roof of my house to remain stable, the roads on which I drive to remain solid. Our medical system with its superior training, facilities, and staff have assured me that most any problem can be repaired. Our freedom to worship—a right we have counted on for over two centuries—has always felt as dependable as bedrock. But the dark clouds on our world’s horizons are challenging my thinking about where my trust is placed.
I ask myself, is my security, my stability resting too heavily on my circumstances?
In the midst of the 2008 economic crash in America, I found these words which stabilized my anxiety then, and again today: “And He will be the stability of your times” (Isaiah 33:6).
There is so much I cannot change or fix about this world. That will always be true. And so the rock of Christ, the anchor of my soul, must be my sure hope and my stability, not the predictable norms I long to cherish. The eternal truth that God is sovereign is either true or it is not. I’m counting on its veracity because He brings more peace than any treaty or alliance of men possibly could.
As I read my Bible there are predictions that hard times are ahead. At the end of the age, whether that is just around the corner or decades away, life will become harder and not easier. In this, too, He is the stability I desire, need, and long for. I pray you will join me in growing deeper roots into the only One who can make us safe if disease spreads, if a terrorist group attacks, or if storms or earthquakes shake.
I also pray that we will make the transcendent truth of God and His Word more a part of our conversations so that others may also know of this hope and stability. Christians have become fearful as our culture that once supported us and our freedom to worship now is undercutting and overtly attacking many of us.
What if our land is ruined by a natural disaster? What if some foreign nation launches a missile that reaches our shores? Will you rest on God’s promises then?
Centuries-old trees, like sequoias and oaks, endure through drought and storms because when conditions are good they eagerly soak up nourishment and sink their roots deeper to prepare for the hard times that always come.
Will you sink your roots into the Rock of Christ?
Will you invite Him to be the stability of your times no matter what may come?