Everything Must Be Shaken
How History Reveals What Cannot Be Moved
At the launch of Kenya’s Infrastructure Fund, President William Ruto made a remark that captured public attention in unexpected ways. Speaking about the mobilization of pension savings for infrastructure investment, he observed that “pension money is for pensioners, but pensioners have children.” He then added, quoting the head of the Africa Finance Corporation: “We must use pensions to create jobs for the children of those whose pensions we are managing. That money must work for the pensioners. It must work for their children.”
The statement was meant to articulate a philosophy of development: capital that lies dormant should be mobilized for national growth. Yet outside the hall where the remarks were delivered, the reaction was far more cautious. In a country where public funds have too often vanished into corruption scandals, many listeners heard something else. The suspicion surfaced quickly in public conversation: pension money, some feared, was being positioned for loss.
What made the reaction revealing was not merely the suspicion itself but what it exposed about the anxieties of the present moment. Pensions represent one of the modern world’s most powerful symbols of stability. They embody the promise that years of labour will culminate in security during old age. When doubts arise about the safety of such funds, something larger than a financial arrangement begins to tremble. Confidence in the future itself begins to shift.
Almost simultaneously, another development quietly passed through Kenya’s public institutions. A circular issued by the Public Service Commission revised the mandatory retirement age for lecturers and researchers in public universities and research institutions, adjusting a policy many had long assumed was firmly settled. What appeared to be a routine administrative directive carried a subtle reminder: even arrangements that appear permanent within institutions can be revisited, recalibrated, and reordered.
Together, these moments reveal something deeper about the nature of human systems. Pension structures, employment guarantees, and institutional policies often carry an air of permanence. The phrase “permanent and pensionable” once suggested a stability capable of stretching across an entire career. Yet events like these expose a quieter truth. What appears fixed can move. What appears permanent can be revised. Institutions, like all human constructions, remain subject to the slow tremors of time.
Moments like these are seldom interpreted beyond their immediate political or administrative context. They are discussed as policy debates, fiscal risks, or governance concerns. Yet beneath these explanations lies a deeper pattern. Institutions designed to guarantee stability eventually encounter forces that expose their limits. Systems that promise permanence gradually reveal themselves to be provisional. What appears to be a small administrative adjustment may therefore belong to a much larger rhythm that has repeated itself across centuries.
Human beings instinctively build structures that promise stability. Governments exist to maintain order. Universities preserve knowledge. Financial systems promise long-term security. Civilization itself depends upon these institutions because societies must transmit authority, wealth, and wisdom across generations. Each structure carries an implicit hope that it will endure.
Yet history tells a more complicated story.
Empires that once appeared immovable now survive only in ruins and textbooks. Political orders collapse. Economic systems reorganize. Cultural assumptions evolve. Even the most respected institutions must continually adjust to new realities. What once seemed unshakeable gradually reveals itself to be provisional.
The Christian Scriptures recognize this instability and interpret it through a striking theological lens. Rather than portraying history as chaotic drift, they describe a pattern in which moments of upheaval serve a deeper purpose. Periodically, the structures of human life tremble. Systems shift. Institutions reorganize. The biblical writers describe such moments with a powerful word: shaking.
The Epistle to the Hebrews captures the idea with remarkable clarity. God declares that He will shake “not the earth only, but also heaven,” and the writer explains the meaning of this promise: the removal of things that can be shaken so that what cannot be shaken may remain (Hebrews 12:26–27).
The statement proposes something profound about the architecture of reality. Not everything possesses the same degree of permanence. Some structures exist only for a time. Others rest upon foundations that endure beyond the movements of history.
Shaking therefore becomes a form of revelation. When systems tremble, their true foundations become visible. What seemed permanent may collapse. What seemed fragile may endure. The shaking separates what is temporary from what is enduring.
The biblical story traces this pattern from its earliest pages.
Genesis begins with creation itself ordered by the word of God. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth… and God said, Let there be light” (Genesis 1:1–3). The world does not arise from chance or human effort but from divine command. Creation itself therefore possesses a kind of contingent stability. It exists because it is upheld by the one who spoke it into being.
Yet the harmony of creation soon fractures. Human civilization grows violent and corrupt, and the narrative of the Flood describes an entire world order collapsing under judgement (Genesis 6:11–13). Waters cover the earth and the structures of human society disappear beneath them (Genesis 7:17–23). What had seemed secure proves incapable of sustaining itself. Yet amid the devastation, a remnant survives. Noah and his family remain, carrying forward the possibility of renewal (Genesis 8:15–19). The shaking removes what has become destructive so that life might begin again.
Humanity then gathers once more to secure permanence through its own power. The tower of Babel rises as a monument to human unity and ambition. The builders seek to establish a name that will endure and a city that cannot be scattered (Genesis 11:1–4). Yet the project collapses abruptly. Languages divide. Communication fractures. The builders disperse across the earth (Genesis 11:7–9). Once again a structure that appeared destined for permanence proves fragile.
Throughout Israel’s history the same pattern unfolds. Kingdoms rise and fall. Saul’s throne collapses while David’s kingdom emerges (1 Samuel 31:6; 2 Samuel 5:3–5). The united monarchy later fragments and eventually falls before foreign empires (2 Kings 17:6; 25:8–11). Each moment feels catastrophic to those living through it, yet each becomes part of a larger unfolding story.
The prophets begin to describe these upheavals in cosmic language. Isaiah speaks of a day when the heavens will shake and the earth will move from its place (Isaiah 13:13). Joel describes the earth quaking and the heavens trembling (Joel 2:10). Haggai announces a promise later echoed in Hebrews: God will shake the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the dry land (Haggai 2:6).
One of the most striking prophetic images appears in the book of Daniel. In a vision given to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, the great empires of history appear as a colossal statue composed of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay (Daniel 2:31–33). Each section represents a successive world power that will dominate the earth for a season. Yet the vision ends in a surprising way. A stone “cut out without hands” strikes the statue and shatters it. The kingdoms of human power collapse like chaff in the wind, while the stone grows into a mountain that fills the whole earth (Daniel 2:34–35). Daniel explains the vision with a simple declaration: “In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44).
The pattern is unmistakable. Human empires rise and fall, but the kingdom established by God endures.
When the New Testament opens, the theme continues in surprising ways. Jesus himself declares that even the temple, the central institution of Israel’s religious life, will not remain untouched. “There shall not be left here one stone upon another” (Matthew 24:2). Structures that once appeared permanent prove temporary.
The shaking reaches a dramatic moment at the crucifixion. As Christ dies, the earth quakes and rocks split (Matthew 27:51). What appears to be the collapse of hope becomes the turning point of redemption.
The Epistle to the Hebrews later contrasts two mountains to explain the meaning of this new order. Mount Sinai trembled when God descended upon it (Exodus 19:18). But believers, the writer explains, have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22). And the conclusion follows naturally: we are receiving “a kingdom which cannot be moved” (Hebrews 12:28).
Because of this, believers themselves are urged to adopt a posture of stability even while the world around them trembles. The apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
The final pages of Scripture carry this vision to its ultimate horizon. John sees a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). God dwells among His people and the old order passes away (Revelation 21:3–4). At the centre of the renewed creation stands the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:1–3).
The arc of Scripture therefore traces a remarkable pattern. Human systems rise and fall. Institutions shift. Even creation itself trembles. Yet through all the shaking something enduring remains.
For the biblical vision of history does not culminate in the collapse of meaning but in the unveiling of a kingdom that cannot be shaken.
The shaking was never the end of the story. It was the unveiling.
The institutions we trust, the systems we construct, the securities we accumulate: pensions, governments, and empires belong to the fragile architecture of human history.
Everything that can be shaken will be shaken. And what remains will be the one reality that never depended on the stability of human systems.