Thought for the Day - Saturday 2 May

Thought for the Day – Saturday 2^nd May

Psalm 121:

I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

Protection comes in many forms.

I think this is something we are all coming to realise during this time of ‘Lockdown’. We are protecting ourselves by staying in our homes, we are protecting ourselves by shielding ourselves from others, we are protecting ourselves and others by social distancing from them; we are protecting our families by not mingling our households, and in doing all of this we are protecting the capacity of our NHS to deal with whatever may come their way during this time of Covid-19. We are trusting our Government to protect our NHS and Key Workers with Personal Protection Equipment and we are trusting those workers to protect the lives of all of our loved ones in their care. Indeed protection seems to have become the focus of our lives.

Certainly, on a lighter note, we here at the manse are in a further protection mode – yes, we are doing all of the above protections but we are also trying our utmost at the moment to protect new life - to protect the new little fledglings growing ever stronger in our hedge. We are protecting them from the cats and foxes which seems to roam our garden and from the magpies who attempt to enter the hedge and destroy the nests and all in them. 

Protection! Protection! Protection!

Yet, here in Psalm 121 we see that our ultimate protection comes from God.

Our God who never sleeps, who never takes his eyes from us, who protects us day and night, keeping, at all times, our lives in his loving and caring arms.   

Of course, we do have to remember to look to him, we have to remember to pray to him whenever we feel in need of help and protection and in thankfulness for his constancy we also need to remember to praise him for the care and protection he gives.

Prayer

Loving God,

For all those who are watching over us, protecting us, shielding us from harm, we thank you.
For the roof over our heads that shades us from the sun, for the walls that shield us from all storms,
for the bed in which we sleep each night, we thank you.

Thanks be to you, maker of heaven and earth, who keeps us from evil, who preserves our lives, who watches over our coming and going at all times. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.