Daily Manna · Day 153 · June 2
Excellent Lovingkindness
“How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.”
Psalm 36 contains one of the loveliest lines in the Psalms: "How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings."
That line does not open the psalm. It comes halfway through, and the place it is written from changes what it means.
Psalm 36 begins somewhere dark. Its first four verses describe a man with "no fear of God before his eyes." "He flattereth himself in his own eyes." "He deviseth mischief upon his bed." David is watching this man from close by, and near the end of the psalm he prays, "let not the hand of the wicked remove me." So the sentence about wings was written by somebody who was being worn down by the people around him.
From there David lifts his head and starts measuring God. "Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." "Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep." Heaven, clouds, mountains and the deep sea: he is naming four things far too large for the man who is troubling him to touch. Then the line about the wings adds it all up. Because God's faithful love is that big, people come and put themselves under His wings.
The promise rests on that measurement, so take it plainly. The shelter is offered while the weather is still bad. Trust is more than holding a good opinion of the wing from the far side of the yard. It means running under it while the hawk is still in the sky, the way a chick runs to its mother. And notice who is invited: "the children of men." The psalm does not limit it to the strong, or to people who have everything under control. It means anybody at all. There is room under those wings for you, and that shelter is as excellent as the God it belongs to.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 153 is Fallow Ground (Hosea 10:12).