In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by.
✙ Ps 57:1 ✙
I'll let Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) take the wheel today. Kuyper was not only an influential Reformed theologian, but also served as prime minister of the Netherlands for four years in the early 20th century. This little passage is from To Be Near unto God (1918, translated from the Dutch by J.H. de Vries):
Hiding with God is not dwelling in his tent, or knowing the secret grace of the hidden walk. Hiding never indicates a fixed condition, but always something transient. We seek shelter from a thunderstorm, in order presently, when the sun shines again, to step out from our hiding-place, and continue on our way. Little chickens hide with the mother hen, when a water-rat is around; but when it is gone, they run out again. And the soul of him who knows God, hides with his Father, as long as trouble lasts; but when it is overpassed, there is no more need of hiding. Hiding in God is not the ordinary, but the extraordinary condition of a single moment "until these calamities be overpast" (Ps. 57:1), or as said in Is. 26:20, "until the indignation be overpast."
But even he who fears God, does not hide with him in every time of need. Trouble and care are upon us all the days of our life. The cross must be taken up each day anew. But as a rule the child of God calmly pursues his way in the assured confidence of Divine protection. He knows that God fights for him, that God is his shadow, that as his good shepherd he leads him, and that when too violent an assault threatens, God covers him with his shield. He then dwells with God, and God does not leave him to himself. All this is the daily, ordinary activity of faith, the operation of God's faithfulness, and of the trust of his child.
O Lord our God, under the shadow of thy wings let us hope; protect us, and carry us. Thou wilt carry us both when little, and even to hoar hairs wilt thou carry us; for our firmness, when it is thou, then is it firmness; but when our own, it is infirmity. Our good ever lives with thee; from which when we turn away, we are turned aside. Let us now, O Lord, return, that we may not be overturned, because with thee our good lives without any decay, which good art thou; nor need we fear, lest there be no place whither to return, because we fell from it: for through our absence, our mansion fell not—thy eternity.
—Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
In Jesus' Name who taught me to pray: Our Father...
