Be Still and Know
I was walking outside one day when the wind picked up unexpectedly. Not a storm really, just enough to make everything feel unsteady. My hair was everywhere, leaves were tumbling across the ground, and I remember instinctively trying to steady myself, lean into it, control it somehow.
But the more I resisted, the harder it felt. Then I noticed something simple: the trees weren’t doing that. They weren’t fighting it or freezing in place. They were moving with it; bending, swaying, letting the wind pass through them instead of against them.
And it made me wonder how often I try to stand rigid in things I was never meant to control. (The answer for me is so, so, so often.) Have you ever stopped to watch the world when it’s windy?
The trees don’t fight it. The flowers don’t freeze. The grass doesn’t panic. They all just move… they dance. There’s a kind of quiet trust in the way creation bends without breaking, as if it understands something we are still learning.
Maybe that’s what faith looks like or what it is meant to look like. Not standing still in control, but learning how to move with what we cannot control and still remain rooted in something deeper. Rooted in something deeper than the wind, deeper than the moment, deeper than what can be seen or controlled.
Because the wind will change. Seasons will shift. What feels steady today may feel uncertain tomorrow. But what holds us is not the absence of movement around us, but the presence of God within it.
A tree does not survive the wind because it avoids it, but because its roots go deeper than the storm can reach. Our roots are in God, and they have to be to withstand the storms. Storms that look like illness, deception, betrayal, lies, diagnosis, loss, and the unexpected.
Maybe that is where faith quietly grows: in the hidden places, where no one sees the depth forming, only the strength that comes from it later. Like celebrating the birth of a child even through the grief of loss, and seeing how love still carries life forward. In prayer that feels ordinary yet sacred, specific to the exact moment someone you love is going into surgery and facing the unknown. In trust that is practiced more than it is felt. In choosing, again and again, to believe that God is still good even when life feels anything but settled.
And so we learn that we are not called to be unmoved by life, but unmoved in who we are anchored to. Not rigid. Not resistant. But rooted. Deep enough that the wind can pass through, and still, we remain.
It reminds me of Matthew West’s song “Good”, where we’re invited to see beyond what is immediately in front of us. The song states a simple truth: life doesn’t always feel good, but God is still good. There are seasons that feel like strong winds, unexpected changes, loss, waiting, uncertainty, moments where we wish things would stop shifting so we could regain our footing.
But Scripture gently calls us back to what does not move. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
It’s not a command to deny the wind, but an invitation to remember who is in it with us. Even when everything around us is shifting, God is not shaken. His goodness does not depend on our circumstances.
Creation seems to understand this better than we do. The trees don’t resist the storm; they flex and endure. The grass doesn’t argue with the wind; it yields and survives. And somehow, in that surrender, there is still beauty.
Maybe faith is learning that same rhythm, not a faith that demands stillness in every storm, but a faith that trusts God’s goodness even while we’re being moved.
Because even when life doesn’t feel good, God does not stop being good.
So when the winds come, and they will, may we not rush to resist them or fear them, but learn to trust the One who holds them. In the movement, may we discover what creation already seems to know: we are not called to control the wind, only to remain rooted in the goodness of God who never moves.