Be Still And Know

Psalm 95.6-7 NLT 'Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today!' These words of invitation are often used at the beginning of church services to remind us of how wonderful God is, and how much he deserves our worship. But although God is perfect and is worthy of our complete devotion, he will never impose himself on us. It is up to us to respond, and listening is a crucial part of that response. The sad reality is that we often do not listen and the psalmist reflects on a time when the people of Israel refused to listen. They were at the start of their wilderness wanderings and there was no water to drink. I don’t want to minimise the acute difficulty of such a dilemma, but the people’s response was to complain and not to listen to God. Although he had miraculously delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and provided regular food for them through the provi