Be Still And Know

Psalm 115:1 'Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name goes all the glory for your unfailing love and faithfulness.' It is said that William Wilberforce marked the passing of the bill to abolish the slave trade by meditating on this psalm. However great our human successes, it is always our first duty to worship God and to praise him for his greatness and provision. The reason for that is simple. Everything we have and are comes to us as a gift from God, and so we need to make sure that he is the first one to get the praise. This is not to ignore the massive amount of hard work, fiery determination and sheer courage that Wilberforce put into the campaign to dismantle the slave trade. From our modern perspective, the slave trade appears so obviously evil that it is hard to believe that the struggle was so great. However, the grim reality is that it was a very long and bitter battle during which Wilberforce and his friends struggled against huge vested interests including, not least, within the Church