Be Still And Know

Proverbs 26:17 Interfering in someone else’s argument is as foolish as yanking a dog’s ears. For nearly 16 years, we enjoyed the company of Zephyr, a beautiful yellow Labrador. When he joined us as a little puppy, our three children were all at home. For those years, he became every inch a member of the family. He was extraordinarily patient with us all, and if we accidentally knocked into him, he always took it in his stride. He had a wonderful temperament, but every now and again we were reminded that he was immensely strong and shouldn’t be messed with. You should have seen him fighting with a hedgehog! Wonderful and gracious as Zephyr was, he was a dog, and if someone were to yank him unkindly by the ears I think he could have done them a great deal of damage. I certainly wouldn’t have dared to do any such thing myself. This might sound like rather mundane and obvious advice, but the writer of the Proverbs knew that all wisdom was of crucial importance. Interfering in other people’s arguments has wreck

Daniel 10:18-19 Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “for you are very precious to God. Peace! Be encouraged! Be strong!” Daniel’s amazing courage comes across powerfully in this book. His willingness to face up to tyrannical kings and even hungry lions is very impressive, but that isn’t the whole story. We also meet Daniel when he is feeling ill and weak. The vision he received about the future in the previous chapter left him feeling terrible for three weeks. He was in a state of mourning throughout that time and commented: “my strength left me, my face grew deathly pale, and I felt very weak” (Daniel 10:8). Like Daniel, we can all identify times when we have felt on top of the world and then other moments when we have felt completely weak and useless. None of us can be strong all the time. It was in this time of great weakness that God sent a messenger to Daniel telling him how precious he was to God. When things go badly, o

Daniel 9:5-6 But we have sinned and done wrong. We have rebelled against you and scorned your commands and regulations. We have refused to listen to your servants the prophets. As Daniel reflected on the history of his people, he realised that he needed to come to God with a prayer of confession. He knew that he was part of a nation that had rebelled against God for many centuries. Their history was a tragic catalogue of failure and disobedience. God had given them every opportunity to put things right, but they had chosen to live in opposition to him. However, Daniel knew that his generous God was ready to forgive their sins if only the people would turn to him. When we confess our sins, we are facing the facts about ourselves and our world. This is something we all have to do in everyday life, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to us. Last year, our boiler broke down. It had come to the end of its life and it needed replacing. We needed to face the facts and engage a reliable heating firm to fit a new one.

Daniel 9:4 “O Lord, you are a great and awesome God! You always fulfil your covenant and keep your promises of unfailing love to those who love you and obey your commands.” God gave Daniel a number of alarming visions. They left him confused and exhausted, and he felt sick for many days. The future was full of questions and threats, but things became clearer as he studied the prophecy of Jeremiah and reflected on the past. Everything that had happened had been the result of the unfaithfulness of God’s people. God had loved his people and wonderfully provided for them, but they had consistently disobeyed him and gone their own way. Daniel recognised that God was the complete opposite of his people. Their consistent unfaithfulness was matched by God’s constant faithfulness. God could always be trusted to keep his word because it was based upon a covenant. Throughout the whole of the Bible, we discover the importance of covenant. It is similar to the word ‘contract’ because there are two sides to the covenant

Daniel 6:10 But when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God. When King Darius took over from King Nebuchadnezzar, he found Daniel to be a very effective administrator, so he gave him more and more responsibilities. This stirred up the envy of other leaders, who were determined to bring Daniel down a peg or two. However, they had a problem because no one could find anything for which to criticise him. He was said to be faithful, always responsible and completely trustworthy (Daniel 6:4). The only way they could trip him up was by introducing a new law which said that no one could pray to anyone other than the king. The king duly passed this law and the penalty for disobeying it was to be thrown into a den of lions – a horrifying way to die. Daniel was in the habit of praying three times a day, and nothing was going to stop

Daniel 4:27 [Daniel said:] “King Nebuchadnezzar, please accept my advice. Stop sinning and do what is right. Break from your wicked past and be merciful to the poor. Perhaps then you will continue to prosper.” Daniel was an incredibly courageous person. He was talking to one of the most powerful people who had ever walked this earth and giving him some staggeringly bad news. He was telling King Nebuchadnezzar the meaning of his dream: he was going to be driven away from human society and would live with wild animals where he would eat grass like a cow (Daniel 4:25). This isn’t the sort of message you would want to deliver to a powerful despot who was inclined to kill his opponents at a moment’s notice! Daniel informed the king that his life would only improve when he had learned his lesson. This was an incredibly tough message, but Daniel knew he had to be faithful to God and tell the king the truth. The result was amazing. Nebuchadnezzar suffered in all the ways that were prophesied and ended up praising

Daniel 3:25 “Look!” Nebuchadnezzar shouted. “I see four men, unbound, walking around in the fire unharmed! And the fourth looks like a god!” Nebuchadnezzar was an incredibly powerful king, and he was used to getting his own way. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego defied his command to worship his vast golden statue, he was determined that they should suffer, and his fiery furnace seemed like a fairly decisive punishment. To ensure their immediate death, he had the furnace heated up seven times hotter than usual. It was so hot that it killed the soldiers who threw them into it. Nebuchadnezzar watched the spectacle believing they would be burned to a cinder, but the outcome was completely different. Not only were they not burned, but they weren’t even singed and, more amazingly, he saw that they were accompanied by a fourth person, who he assumed must be a god. This was more than enough to change Nebuchadnezzar’s mind and cause him to worship the God of the young Jewish men. As a result, he gave them even

Daniel 3:16-18 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God whom we serve is able to save us. He will rescue us from your power, Your Majesty. But even if he doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, Your Majesty, that we will never serve your gods or worship the gold statue you have set up.” Living in exile was bound to present many challenges. When Nebuchadnezzar set up his enormous golden statue and demanded that everyone fall down and worship it, these Jewish young men knew they had to draw a line. They couldn’t possibly obey the King’s law. The consequences couldn’t have been more severe, and they were all thrown into a great furnace. But before that, they had the opportunity to state their position. They pointed out to the king that their God was so mighty that he could save them, but even if he didn’t, they would refuse to worship the gold statue. We also live in exile. This world is no

Daniel 2:47 The king said to Daniel: “Truly, your God is the greatest of gods, the Lord over kings, a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this secret.” This was quite a turnaround! One moment Daniel was being threatened with death and now, having revealed the meaning of his dream, King Nebuchadnezzar made him ruler of the province of Babylon. He showered him with expensive gifts and declared that Daniel’s God was the greatest God of all. Given that Daniel was a foreigner from a land far away that had been defeated by the Babylonians, this was a truly revolutionary change. However, Nebuchadnezzar’s acknowledgement that Daniel’s God was the one true God did nothing to change his behaviour, and shortly afterwards, we find him setting up an enormous golden statue which he expected the people to worship. There is no question that King Nebuchadnezzar was deeply impressed by all that Daniel had done. And there is no reason to doubt that he was genuinely in awe of the power and wisdom of Dani

Daniel 2:44 During the reigns of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed or conquered. It will crush all these kingdoms into nothingness, and it will stand forever. Thanks to God’s help, Daniel was able to tell King Nebuchadnezzar what he had dreamed and then interpret that dream as well. He said there would be four kingdoms, all of which gave an impression of strength, but would fall. However, at the same time, God was establishing his own kingdom, which would last for ever. Through the years, people have wanted to identify the four kingdoms, and there have been lots of candidates. That is not the point of the dream. The point is that when God establishes his kingdom, it will endure. History is in God’s hands. Through the centuries, there has been a long succession of seemingly all-powerful kingdoms. They were militarily strong, they shaped powerful cultures and they dominated their people’s thinking. It was inconceivable that they could ever come to an end, but

Daniel 2:23 “I thank and praise you, God of my ancestors, for you have given me wisdom and strength. You have told me what we asked of you and revealed to us what the king demanded.” Daniel had been given an impossible job. Not only did he have to tell King Nebuchadnezzar the interpretation of his dream, but he had to inform the king what he had dreamed about in the first place! What made the matter even worse was that the king’s wise men were threatened with death if they failed. However, Daniel knew that he was in touch with the source of all wisdom, God himself, and so he prayed. You wouldn’t blame Daniel if he had prayed a desperate prayer, screaming at God to do the impossible in order to save him from certain death, but he didn’t. His prayer was one of worship and adoration. He acknowledged that God was the source of all wisdom and power and that, ultimately, everything that happened in the world was in the Lord’s hands. He was confident that God would do what looked impossible and reveal both the c

Daniel 1:17 God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams. The book of Daniel transports us to the time when Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, invaded Judah and took thousands of its residents into exile. This happened in the 6th century BC. God had clearly prophesied that this would happen if the people failed to obey him, and Babylon’s victory was utterly humiliating. To be dragged hundreds of miles away to a completely unfamiliar place and culture represented Judah’s total failure. However, King Nebuchadnezzar recognised that amid the exiles were some very gifted young men. He chose four of them who were strong, healthy, and good-looking, and trained them up for service in the royal palace. They were Daniel and his three friends, who we know best by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The four exiles clearly fitted well into their new life. They had an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. We also learn tha

Psalm 68:28 Summon your might, O God. Display your power, O God, as you have in the past. There’s a Russian proverb which says: “Dwell in the past and you’ll lose an eye. Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes.” This is particularly important for those who follow God because we learn so much about him from history. As we consider how he has led his people through thousands of years, we see his faithfulness, love, kindness and generosity. The psalmist looked back to the time of Moses when God gave the law on Sinai. This was a foundational time for the people of Israel, giving shape to every aspect of their life together and with God. The psalmist then recalled the time of Deborah, when the earth shook as God fought for his people. All of this led up to the time of David, when the Ark of the Covenant was brought up to Jerusalem with great rejoicing. Every step of the journey had shown them more about the nature of their God. We have the blessing of being able to read the Bible and see how God led his pe

Psalm 66:1-2 Shout joyful praises to God, all the earth! Sing about the glory of his name! Tell the world how glorious he is. When we think about worship, we naturally focus on the church community we meet with regularly, and this is entirely understandable and deeply precious. We thank God for our brothers and sisters and the relationship we share with them. We need to be careful, however, because worship belongs to the whole world, not just to the group with whom we worship. The psalmist’s vision was for everyone to worship God, so when we worship, we should keep everyone else in mind. Because everyone has been made by God, everyone needs a relationship with him, and their life will only be complete when they live in partnership with him. At the heart of our worship, there needs to be a longing that everyone around us will join in. We see a similar attitude in the New Testament. Writing to the Philippians, Paul spoke about how Jesus took upon himself the nature of servant. He humbled himself and became

Psalm 65:9 You take care of the earth and water it, making it rich and fertile. The river of God has plenty of water; it provides a bountiful harvest of grain, for you have ordered it so. These days, less than two per cent of the population works in agriculture so, for most of us, harvesting feels a world away from our everyday lives. In pre-industrial society, most people were involved in agriculture, and harvest was a massive communal activity. It was desperately hard work, and the lives of agricultural workers were intimately bound up with the rhythms of the seasons. It’s no wonder that many of the psalms make reference to harvesting. Our circumstances are very different, but we are still dependent on the work of our farmers, and I am delighted that most churches hold harvest celebrations every year. They remind us that our food, however it comes to us, is a gift from God. This is a good moment to focus attention on our farmers. It is well known that the rate of suicide is high among those who work th

Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water. This psalm was almost certainly penned by King David after he had fled from his son Absalom, who had attempted to take over his father’s throne. It was an agonising situation. Absalom was David’s third son and great favourite. He was charming and handsome and clearly loved the life of pomp and ceremony. We learn that he drove in a magnificent chariot with 50 men running in front of him. After a while, the power went to his head, and he decided to rebel against his father. To be betrayed by anyone is an appalling experience, but to be betrayed by your own much-loved son must have been almost too awful to bear. In despair, David fled to the desert, and had time to reflect on what mattered most in his life. He was absolutely clear that his relationship with the living God was everything to him. “Your unfailing love is better than life,” he

Psalm 62:10 If your wealth increases, don’t make it the centre of your life. The issue of wealth often comes up in the Bible. Psalm 112 gives an attractive picture of the person who follows the Lord. Such a person takes delight in the Lord’s commands and even in the darkness, the light shines for them. They are also described as wealthy and, at the same time, generous and compassionate. Everything that we have is a gift from God, so whatever we have should be a cause for rejoicing, whether it is great or little. The challenge comes when wealth increases, because possessions are always greedy for our attention. They want to become the main focus of our life, and that’s when the rot sets in. Only God deserves that place, and that’s exactly what our verse today is warning us about. We should ensure that wealth never takes centre stage in our lives. The book of Proverbs is wonderfully helpful on the subject of wealth. It often warns against the dangers of idleness and applauds hard work. It recognises that it

Psalm 62:1-2 I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will never be shaken. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in life? It may have been an illness, the death of someone who was close to you, the betrayal of a friend or the breakup of a relationship. In such moments, we desperately need to know where to turn. We need a rock. King David seemed to face such challenges frequently, and he found God to be his rock and his fortress. He knew that, even though life continued to hurl difficulties at him, he was unshakable. In this particular psalm, he spoke about those who were aiming to bring him down through their lies. They trusted in extortion and bragged about their stolen goods. They were always seeking to trip him up, but he discovered that they, and their threats, counted for nothing in the face of God’s unshakable strength. The writer to the Hebrews reflected that everything in this life can be shaken. Things may seem secur

John 12:3 Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance. Mary’s anointing of Jesus was a beautiful act of devotion, but it is hard not to have at least some sympathy for Judas, who pointed out that the precious perfume would have cost the equivalent of one year’s wages. That’s a huge amount of money. We know that Judas was a thief, but anyone might question the wisdom of spending such a vast amount of money in that way. However, incredible generosity is the natural language of love. Mary was devoted to Jesus and no gift could have been too lavish or generous for her Lord. I love that the fragrance of the perfume filled the house. I’m sure it did, and probably for many days afterwards. We are still blessed by her lavish generosity 2,000 years later because it gives us beautiful insight into the nature of love. There are thousands of people in our country who care for

John 11:33-36 When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him: “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” Very soon after this, Lazarus was brought back to life, but we shouldn’t rush past this moment of intense emotion. Jesus was up against the great enemy of death, and he was clearly overwhelmed by the sense of tragedy. He had the power to overcome death but, in this moment, he fully entered into the sheer sadness of the situation. His dear friends Mary and Martha were clearly grief stricken, and as he went to see the body of Lazarus, nothing could hold him back from weeping. Those who looked on immediately saw this as a clear sign of his love for Lazarus. Even though Jesus was the resurrection and the life, he entered fully into the emotional turmoil of the circumstances. The writer to the Heb