My Shade

What can I say? It's been a hard week.  As I lay in my bed this morning next to my bottle of antibiotics, two inhalers and a bag of cough drops, of which the ants have helped themselves, I started to despair.

I could feel the heat from my three year old's little feverish body and all I could think about was how hard things are for me right now. How it really sucks that I have been sick for three weeks and I am not feeling an better. I thought about how frustrating it is for my baby to now have a fever after being sick for five days and what this might mean. Do I need to take him to the doctor? Am I going to be sick for two months and end up with a cracked rib from coughing so much like I did last spring? Why Bronchitis again? Haven't I suffered enough? Will I ever have a time where I am not consumed by illness, pain or doctor's appointments?

What was happening? Ugh, I was doing it again. Listening to myself instead of talking to myself.  My "self" is a drama queen. She is despairing. She can't see beyond the situation at hand. So what did I do? First I recognized the road I was heading down. I had been on facebook a few minutes earlier and had seen a few other friends who seemed to be heading the same way. I figured if I could encourage them that Christ CAN handle this day even if they couldn't, then shouldn't I take my own advice?

I started with a few emails asking my home-girls for prayer. I received some encouragement and offers of help but then I quickly realized something was wrong here. I was going to the wrong source of help. Yes, it's great to ask others to pray and to ask for help but they aren't my salvation. They are not in whom I shall trust.

"Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid.
The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song;
He has become my salvation."
Isaiah 12:2

I didn't feel like getting out of bed. I didn't want to do the right thing. I just wanted to lay there and think of all the things that wouldn't get done AGAIN today. And then I read this in an email:

“The biblical call to endure in faith and obedience is a call to trust the Christ-purchased, empowering grace of God. God’s grace is first the gift of pardon and imputed righteousness; then it is the gift of power to fight the good fight and to overflow in good deeds. Christ died to purchase both redeeming pardon and transforming power.”

- John Piper, The Roots of Endurance


After that a lightbulb went off in my head I thought, "o.k. I need to take this to the Lord, right now while it's quiet." So I snuck away from my sleeping little boy that just wanted to "cuddoh" his mommy and I went and got my Bible. I had totally forgoten that earlier that morning I was in the process of copying down Psalm 121 and never finished. So I read it again...and again...and again. I prayed it. I meditated on it. I read a commentary on it. The Lord used it.
 
I had read this Psalm earlier in the week and was struck by the words in verse 5 "The Lord is your shade at your right hand." For someone like me that abhors the heat and does not tolerate it well, this really resonated. I know how much it means to have some shade in the blinding heat. I know how much it means even more to have the Lord at my right hand. Do you know how cool and special that makes me? That means He's there to protect me. He's not going to leave me. And yes this is cheesy but I'm going to say it, He's my right hand man! He's there to help me and will not allow anything to happen to me.

Spurgeon comments on that  figurative description in verse 5, noting that:

 When a blazing sun pours down its burning beams upon our heads the Lord Jehovah Himself will interpose to shade us, and that in the most honourable manner, acting as our right hand Attendant, and placing us in comfort and safety. "The Lord at thy right hand shall smite through kings". How different this from the portion of the ungodly ones who have Satan standing at their right hand, and of those of whom Moses said, "their defence has departed from them". God is as near us as our shadow, and we are as safe as angels. (Treasury of David Psalm 121:5)

So go and be encouraged that you are so cherished that the Lord is at your right hand providing for you everything you need. In whatever trial you may be in right now remember, He is there holding your hand and whispering "It WILL be o.k."
 

  Psalm 121

"I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;

From where shall my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

Who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to slip;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, He who keeps Israel

Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;

The LORD is your shade on your right hand.

The sun will not smite you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

The LORD will protect you from all evil;

He will keep your soul.

The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in

From this time forth and forever.