Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our Reading Today titled Still Before God was written by James Banks.

The first photograph of a living person was taken by Louis de Guerre in 1838.

The photo depicts a figure on an otherwise empty avenue in Paris in the middle of an afternoon.

But there's an apparent mystery about it.

The street and sidewalks should have been bustling with the traffic of carriages and pedestrians at that time of day, yet none can be

seen. The man wasn't alone. People and horses were there on the busy boulevard de

template, the popular area where the photo was taken. They just didn't show up in the picture.

The exposure time to process the photograph, known as de garotype, took

seven minutes to capture an image, which had to be motionless during that time. It appears that

the man on the sidewalk was the sole person photographed because he was the only one standing still.

He was having his boot shine. Sometimes stillness accomplishes what motion and effort can't. God tells his people in Psalm 4610, be still and know that I am God.

Even when nations are in uproar and the earth shakes,

those who quietly trust in Him will discover in Him an ever-present help and trouble.

The Hebrew verb rendered Be Still can also be translated, cease striving.

When we rest in God, instead of relying on our own limited

efforts, we discover him to be our unassailable refuge and strength.

Join me now for a reading of Psalm 46. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help and

trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart

of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains

quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy

place where the most high dwells. God is within her. She will not fall. God will help her at break of day. Nations are an uproar. Kingdoms fall.

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