I love a snow day. When I was a teacher, checking the weather forecast became one of my favorite hobbies during the winter months. I would pray for snow and then anxiously wait to hear if we would indeed get a snow day. When I decided to stay at home with my boys, I wondered if I would get just as excited about snow days, and the answer is yes.
We know how to do a snow day here in the south. We push pause on the busyness of life. We gather with family and friends to sled, have snow ball fights, and build snowmen (or snow dump trucks if you’re my 2 year old). We drink tons of hot chocolate. We bake. We watch way too much Netflix. We also clear the stores’ shelves of bread and milk (although I’m still not sure exactly what the point of this is. If I’m gonna be snowed in, give me ALL THE chocolate.).
There’s also something so peaceful and beautiful about seeing the snow fall and seeing the ground covered with a beautiful blanket of white. My day leading up to that beautiful snow fall wasn’t so peaceful. I had 2 sick boys. By the end of the day, just as the snow started to fall, I was feeling exhausted. I was ready for a break, but then I felt guilty for wanting a break. Moms, you know how this cycle goes. I was also feeling weighed down because, honestly, I felt like every time I turned around over the past few days I was messing up and needing to ask the Lord’s forgiveness. Goodness. That peaceful snow fall was just what I needed.
Just when it was finally almost bed time for Hunter, those peaceful, white flakes began to fall. We ran outside, sat on my new front porch swing, and watched the snow fall. Jack took Hunter and let the snow flakes fall on him, and he laughed and laughed. It was just what my heart needed. As I sat in my swing watching the snow and 2 of my boys, the Lord reminded me of a command that He gave in the Psalms. “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10 (ESV)
A lot of times, we apply this verse to be talking about our personal devotional life, but thats just one application. Another that we miss out on is that God here is giving an emphatic command to His people and is exclaiming, “BE STILL!” I like to picture it as me trying to dress Hunter. Dressing him is like dressing an alligator. He squirms and fights and wrestles, and I find myself constantly saying, “BE STILL!” This is how God is with us. We squirm and fight and wrestle with Him, and He just wants us to BE STILL.
In this verse, God is commanding us to stop striving, to stop fighting Him, to stop trying to do this Christian life thing on our own, to stop trying to be in control. We strive to please people. We wrestle with Him when we don’t like something that He is doing in our lives. We try to be the best mom, wife, Christian, etc. in our own power. We try to control the unknowns in life. And while we are busy trying to do all of this, God is commanding us to stop. He is commanding us to be still.
The second command here is to know that He is God. When we stop striving in our own power, we can truly know that He is God. He is sovereign. He is just. He is faithful. He is our strength and helper in our weakness. He is in control. He is our source of life. He is who we can trust and lean into when unknown situations arise. He is the creator and God of the universe. He is more than our simple language can describe.
When we follow these commands to be still and know that He is God, that is when we can exalt Him with our lives. We can exalt Him by repenting of our sin and know that He is the God who forgives and redeems. We can exalt Him by trusting Him, even when it’s hard. We can exalt Him by praising Him for His handiwork in creation.
But notice in this verse, the Lord says that He WILL be exalted. One day, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. The Lord will get the glory that He deserves. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to miss out on being a small part in the Lord being exalted among the nations because I was too busy not being still and striving to do life in my own power. My desire is for my life to reflect the fact that I know that He is God and that I want to exalt Him. I fail at this daily. Some days I fail at this every minute, but those are the days that we need to be still and know that He is God the most. Even as we fail, He can be exalted as He lavishes His mercy and grace on us.
So, friends, I urge you- Be still and know that He is God. Stop striving. Stop wrestling. Stop trying to be in control. Rest in the fact that He is God. It’s a beautiful and relieving thing to stop striving and to start abiding in the Father.
As a side note, I hope that your snow day was filled with so much fun and laughter. Part of our snow day consisted of having to convince Hunter that he couldn’t swim in the lake (2 year olds can be funny). Isn’t God so good to give us snow days? And isn’t He so good to use snow days to teach us more about Him? Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
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