Under His Wings

There are years when you are the one everybody else leans on, and nobody notices that nothing is holding you up.

This psalm has a picture for that, and it does not flatter anyone: "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust." That is a bird spreading her wings over her nest. The one under the wing is a chick, small and helpless, and it can add nothing to its own safety. Nothing in this picture suggests two equal partners. The Hebrew word for "wings" here is the same word used of the eagle that "spreadeth abroad her wings" over her young in Deuteronomy, and of the cherubim's wings stretched over the mercy seat. So the picture is not soft or sentimental. But it clearly shows something helpless being covered by Someone who is not.

Then the psalm does something that keeps it honest, and that is why it should be read slowly and not just handed to someone as a promise that nothing bad will happen. In the same verse it names the shield: "his truth shall be thy shield and buckler." What protects you is what God has said. And the verses on either side name what is really out there: "the snare of the fowler," "the noisome pestilence," "the terror by night," "the arrow that flieth by day," and "the destruction that wasteth at noonday." Whoever wrote this psalm knew how badly things can go.

Perhaps you have carried others since you were young, and it has cost you more than anybody knows. Needing to be carried yourself is not a failure of faith, and you do not need to treat it as one today.

So hear what the verse offers. God's covering is for the helpless. There is no version of it for someone who is strong enough not to need it. A chick that runs out from under the wing is not being brave. Come back under the wing, and let Him hold you up for a while.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 82 is Two Kinds of Speech (Psalm 19:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna