It's funny how God works.

I came across this passage of scripture by searching for the word "quietness", which is found later in this same chapter. It seems to me this week that my life has been so busy, so pressured, so "noisy", that what I feel that I need in my life is the calm peace that God provides.

What I found instead in the very first verse of this passage was a directive from God calling us to be that peace that we seek.

Now, there is some disagreement from translators about this passage, and some excellent Bible versions believe that it is the kings and princes in the first couplet that God will make into hiding places from the winds. I think that the World English Bible and others are more correct in asserting that God will make common, ordinary people to be the hiding places, the coverts, the streams in the desert, and the shade from the parching sun.

One reason I believe that people like us are called to be shade is that the rest of the passage talks about how we, not the elite, are to live. We are to see, to hear, to understand, and to speak God's Word. We are to wait on God's timing and God's methods to see the foolish ones' counsel rejected in favor of God's Wisdom, and the evil ones' ways recognized as ways to destruction. "The meek will inherit the earth", and the Power of God brings about that truth.

Another reason I believe that God calls us to be peace is that we know so well what it is like to live without peace. We understand the chaos of everyday life, the crushing blows of heartbreak, and the frustration of limitations imposed on us from every side. It is because we want peace so desperately that we should be eager to spread that peace to those as desperate as we are. We can relate to those who hurt because we have also hurt and because we know the cure for that pain. It is the same reason that Jesus came to live an earthly life: God desired to experience all our frustration and sorrow so that Jesus could guide us out of our pain into God's Joy. We are called to follow Jesus and do the same.

There is an even stronger spiritual truth in our calling to be peace to the world. Paul wrote repeatedly that God is strongest in our weakness, and God brings peace to the world more powerfully because we are so much in need of God's peace. From our own experiences, we each remember how relying on our own strength and wisdom has limited what we allowed God to do. We can cast our own "shadow in a weary land", but we are small, and we cannot last long exposed in the deserts of life. We each struggle to admit our frailty and our weakness, but when our pride gives way to our desperation, we find in God the shelter we need, and in such abundance that everyone can benefit from the grace of God!