Be Still
Composer: Karen Marrolli (MorningStar Music Publishers)
Text: Karen Marrolli, after Psalm 46:10
Season: Sung October 11, 2026, Beverly Heights Sanctuary Choir
Psalm 46 is a psalm about earthquakes, flood, and nations in uproar, and in the middle of it God speaks one sentence: “Be still, and know that I am God.” The command is not addressed to people who are already calm. It is addressed to people watching the mountains fall into the sea.
Karen Marrolli’s anthem takes that sentence and sets it against the psalm’s storm. The choir sings “Be still and know” quietly and keeps returning to it while the text names what rages around it: earthquakes, tempests, shadows, “the night that seems endless and dire.” Each time, the answer is the same, and each time it ends in a promise, that “the earth shall rise again in joy” and “the morn shall rise in holy fire.” The choir sang it in October 2026, in the middle of a sermon series on the spirit of our age, which is as good a context for Psalm 46 as any.
Scripture: Psalm 46; Isaiah 30:15