In the Shadow of His Wings

This week was a really tough one in B4A. Facing and giving voice to the lies that have haunted me for so long. It was an awakening that I am not quite as far along in my healing as I had previously thought. I thought I knew who I was in Christ. But then, I realized that there are still remnants of the falsehoods that were planted repeatedly, and then magnified over the years as each new experience both fed the existing lies, and planted new ones in the garden of deceit.

We studied Psalm 63 earlier in the week, which, among several other Psalms, refers to the refuge of the shadow of His wings–His wings of protection. All week, God continues to feed the image within my soul.

Yesterday in one of my classes, a student chose Kanafim (wings of protection) from the treasure box for our devotional. It brought tears to my eyes (as well as several of my students). It included a recount from an evangelist, Sundar Singh. I’ll share it with you:

Once, as I traveled through the Himalayas, there was a great forest fire. Everyone was frantically trying to fight the fire, but I noticed a group of men standing and looking up into a tree that was about to go up in flames. When I asked them what they were looking at, they pointed up at a nest full of young birds. Above it, the mother bird was circling wildly in the air and calling out warnings to her young ones. There was nothing she or we could do, and soon the flames started climbing up the branches.

As the nest caught fire, we were all amazed to see how the mother bird reacted. Instead of flying away from the flames, she flew down and settled on the nest, covering her little ones with her wings. The next moment, she and her nestlings were burnt to ashes. None of us could believe our eyes. I turned to those standing by and said: “We have witnessed a truly marvelous thing. God created that bird with such love and devotion, that she gave her life trying to protect her young. If her small heart was so full of love, how unfathomable must be the love of her Creator. That is the love that brought him down from heaven to become man. That is the love that made him suffer a painful death for our sake.”

Speechless…

I’m going to have to chew on this one for a while…