Peace, Be Still

“Many things I had believed to be firm and lasting I have found to be not so. Many nights I have lain awake with tears in my eyes trying to understand what God was doing. But, dear sister, God never has required us to understad His ways, only to trust Him.

Perhaps you too, dear sister, know all to well of what I am saying. My heart goes out to you, because I indeed know what it is to fell you whole world crumble around you and fall.
I would like to share something with you that, although out of the ordinary, has greatly given me encouragement and peace when I needed it most. It is a mane of God given to Him by an Egyptian slave girl, Hagar. The name is El Roi (El raw-EE). In Hebrew, it means, The God who sees me.

The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”…She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

~Gensis 16:7-9,13

Wherever you are, whatever has happened to you, whatever you are going through, our God is truly the God who sees! He sees you now and He knows everything. But, He also sees things that we do not. What appears to us to be an unmovable mountain before us, God sees as a stepping stone He will use to bring us closer to Himself, and to make us more like His beloved son, Jesus Christ.

I would like to share a poem with you that I wrote while meditating on all that has happened to me these past months. I hope you would find encouragement in it, as I have.

Peace, Be Still

The storm around me rages

Such a storm all my life I have never known

It threatens to sink me

To draw me down, down, down

Down to defeat and death

I’ve fought so long

I’ve fought so hard

Against the furious wind and powerful waves

And now

The mast above me is nearly breaking

The ship rises to the very heavens

And crashes down again

Down so far, I didnot believe she could ever rise

I had set out on the voyage

On a calm sea

I had been so full of life and hop

I knew Jesus was with me

I am a sailor

I know how to survive at sea

But now

My worst nightmare is reality

There is death in the thunder

The waves are calling out my name

My strong limbs fail beneath me from fatigue

There is nothing more I can do to save myself

I fall on my knees and pray

“Oh God awake!

See the storm rage around me

See the waves lusting for my life

I am a dead man, Oh Lord!

Arise, arise save me!”

I wait, and hear a voice calling over the deafening noise

“Peace, be still.”

When we call to Him, He will answer us, when we draw near to Him He will draw near to us, when we enter the valley of the shadow of death, He will remain right by our side, when we choose to step out of the boat and go to Jesus, we will walk on water.

Written by Emily Rebhan, and exerpted from The King’s Blooming Rose magazine, written and edited by Sarah Bryant
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