Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: July 4th

THE COVERING WING

He shall cover thee with His pinions, and under His wings shall thou take refuge; His truth is a shield and a buckler. - Psalms 41:4

The main idea in this image is that of protection and fostering. There seems to me to be a very distinct triad of thoughts. There is the covering wing; there is the flight to its protection; and there is the warrant for that flight. " He shall cover thee with His pinions"; that is the Divine act. " Under His wings shalt thou trust "; that is the human condition. "His truth shall be thy shield and buckler"; that is the Divine manifestation which makes the human condition possible. Thus the idea is that of the expanded pinion, beneath the shelter of which the callow young lie and are gathered. Whatsoever kites may be in the sky, whatsoever stoats and weasels may be in the hedges, they are safe there. The image suggests not only the thought of protection, but those of fostering, downy warmth, peaceful proximity to a heart that throbs with parental love, and a multitude of other happy privileges realized by those who nestle beneath that wing. But while these subsidiary ideas are not to be lost sight of, the promise of protection is to be kept clear as that chiefly intended by the Psalmist.

This psalm rings throughout with the doctrine that a man who dwells "in the secret place of the Most High" has absolute immunity from all sorts of evil, and there are, too, regions in which that immunity, secured by being under the shadow of the Almighty, is exemplified in the psalm: the one, that of our outward dangers; the other, that of temptation to sin and what we may call spiritual foes. Now, these two regions and departments in which the Christian man does realise, in the measure of his faith, the Divine protection exhibit that protection as administered in two entirely different ways. No man that lies under the shadow of God, and has his heart filled with the continual consciousness of that presence, is likely to fall before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from God; and the defense which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently impregnable than the defense which He gives against external evils. For, as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin not by any outward breastplate or armour, or even by the Divine wing lying above us to cover us, but by an indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit within us makes us free from the law of sin and death, and conquerors over all temptations.