God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult. – Psalm 46:1-3 (NRSVUE)
It has been quite the week for home maintenance at my house. In a three day span, we had our annual service visit for our drinking water well, annual lawn service visit to move/remove leaves, bi-annual furnace maintenance, and a new refrigerator delivered because the old one died several weeks ago (we have been using an old one in the basement to get by). It has been a pretty steady parade of trucks and activity. All of this has been going on as temperatures dip below freezing and the feel of winter is upon us. It lends a sense of preparation to hunker down for a long battle against an upcoming harsh winter. I have no way to know what the winter weather will be like this year, but at the moment it feels like an inevitable onslaught. All we can do is get everything in working order as best as we can so that we are ready to endure.
Life has those cycles where it seems that all you can do is hold on and hope to make it through. In those times it feels like everything is going to fall apart completely. Most of the time it doesn’t. We make it through without any long-term difficulty. All of the activity around our house this week is largely coincidence – mostly things that happen regularly but not the same week just happened to all come together on a cold week. This is not to say that there aren’t times when all that we take for granted in our lives does in fact fall apart. There are times when what we know falls away. Yet even in such times, we have the promise that God is with us. The image of God as our stronghold in times of trouble is ancient. It can be found from biblical times and adapted in every era – think Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” inspired by Psalm 46’s “God is our refuge and strength.”
Even though all else may fail, God persists with us. This is comforting news in times of personal tumult, to be sure, but also on the days that we look at the world around us and feel overwhelmed by the chaos of it. God is sure and steadfast. God is with us to hunker down through the long winter times in our life, just as God is with us in the moments of glorious happiness. We can face those winters, ready to endure, even as the mountains of our lives shake and the waters roar. We fortify ourselves to the extent we can, but ultimately we trust that God will always be with us in whatever may come.