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.”
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 arrives halfway through, and where it is written from changes what it is.
Psalm 36 begins somewhere dark. Its first four verses are a portrait of a man with no fear of God before his eyes, who flattereth himself in his own eyes, who deviseth mischief upon his bed, and the writer is watching from close range: the last verse of the psalm is a prayer that men like this not push him out of his place. So the sentence about wings is composed by somebody being worn down by the company he is obliged to keep.
And from there the psalm lifts its head and starts measuring. God's mercy, it says, is set in the heavens, and his faithfulness reaches as high as the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep. Heaven, cloud, mountain, ocean floor. He is not describing his feelings. He is naming four things too large to be affected by the man ruining his week. Then the word therefore does the arithmetic: because God's covenant love is that size, people put themselves under the wing.
The promise is in that therefore, and it is worth taking plainly. Shelter is not offered on condition the weather improves. And trust is not an opinion held about the wing from the far side of the yard; it is a move made while the hawk is up. The children of men, the psalm says. Not the strong ones. Not the ones with their situation under control. Anybody at all. There is room under there, and the room 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).