Canter Bridge

Help is available.

This is the message that the poet who created Psalm 46 underscores in a time when it seems all that is reliable has been shaken. It takes only one earthquake experience to have that existential stake driven into the soul that only comes when the earth moves.

Anything else can be assumed to shift under duress. But the earth is not supposed to move. It us the Unmoved Thing, the stage upon which all manner of furniture makes its scraping sound as it comes, performs its task, and is whisked away. People march, race, crawl, and drag themselves across it, some lingering beyond their welcome, others making us wish they’d stayed.

But the earth itself does not move.

Then, suddenly, it does, leaving one to wonder whether anything can be trusted.

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 NRSV)

In exploring his theme, the poet refers to God in the midst of chaos with a Hebrew descriptor that is unique in the biblical anthology. He is, we are told, נמצא מאד (nimtsa’ me’od). For a translation, literalists might want something like this: very much to be found. More poetic souls have given us the compelling and enduring a very present help in trouble.

What this English phrase achieves by way of a remarkable aesthetic touch, it partially gives away in terms of the psalmist’s meaning. God is not so much present in some straight-line, indisputable way in times of distresss, as the rather philosophically-inclined English rendering might lead us to believe.

Rather, he is available. That is to say, he is responsive to being sought. He hears and reacts when called upon. He may appear to be hidden or even—the opposite of the English translation before us—absent as all that is strong and trustworthy is cast around like waves on the sea. But he will allow himself to be discovered in that mêlée by one who assiduously looks for him while the house burns down around him.

This psalm, one of the biblical anthology’s finest, moves on to tease out the meaning of divine availability when the foundations are shaken. We learn, rather more prosaically, that The Lord is with us. Perhaps it was this affirmation that led the translators to express YHWH’s presence with their remarkable turning of a phrase that bears repeating: a very present help.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Biblical spirituality, more often than it vanquishes the circumstances of chaos, nourishes a calm spirit at the center. Yet even this is not mechanical, not the product of self-willed stillness. Rather, it follows upon the paradoxical exertion of seeking a God who forcefully allows himself to be found, usually as mountains and peoples continue their raging just outside the fragile door.