Be Still and Wait Patiently

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. —Psalm 37:7 ESV

In the first four verses of Psalm 137, we find pronouns like “we,” “us,” and “our” nine different times. This is a corporate psalm of lament, a reaction to what God’s people had been through. In the first verse, we see their response to what was going on in their hearts: “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.”

Before anything else, the people “sat down.” This tells us there’s a time to be active. There’s a time to stand up, to be in a hurry, and to work. However, there’s also a time to stop; a time to be still; a time to contemplate, to reflect, and to sit down.

Some of us don’t really get insight into what God is doing in our day because we’re in too much of a hurry. We get caught up in the pace of Babylon and don’t know how to sing the songs of Zion when we’re living in this foreign land. Sometimes we just need to sit down and be still.