Under the Wings of God by Cornelius Plantingaနမူနာ

Day One: Under the Wings of God

Scripture: Psalm 46:1-5, 91:1-5, 9-11

One of the great themes of the Scriptures is that God is our shelter. “He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge” (Psalm 91:4). The image here is that of a bird that senses danger and then protectively spreads its wings over its young. Under God’s wings we are defended, protected, perfectly safe.

Still, something here doesn’t seem quite right.

What worries us is that Psalm 91 tells us not to worry. This sounds too good to be true. In fact, the psalmist says, “If . . . you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you” (91:9–10). No harm at all? What about Paul? What about Stephen? What about our Lord Himself—when one day the soldiers took Him outside the city and nailed His wings to a cross.

How can these extravagant promises be God’s Word to us? What Psalm 91 does is express just one of the moods of faith. It’s a lovely and most treasured mood of exuberant confidence in the sheltering providence of God. Probably the psalmist has been protected by God in some dangerous incident, and he is celebrating.

But on other days, and in other moods—in other and darker seasons of his life—this same psalmist might have called to God out of despair and a sense of abandonment. Remember that when our Lord was crucified, when our Lord shouted at our God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He was quoting one of the Psalms (Psalm 22:1).

And yet no final evil can get to us because those wings have never folded. They are spread out on the cross to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised by our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5.) This is the one who protects us from final evil, now and in the life to come—in which it is safe at last for God to fold those wings.

“He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge.” It’s not a simple truth, but it is the truth. And we ought to take it to heart this very day.

What does your struggle look like when God’s protection doesn’t meet your expectation? How does understanding Psalm 91 as an expression of one of the moods of faith help? Prayer: O God, spread your wings over us. Protect us, we pray, in Jesus’s name. Amen.