Great Hope

...hide me under the shadow of your wings... Ps 17:8b

This line from the Psalms featured in today's set readings for Morning Prayer, and as I read it allowed earlier it reminded me of the most important thing of all: whatever we do by our own efforts, we do under the protection of God. It offers a warm image of young chicks and their mother, protecting her young jealously but loosely. So many natural history films have demonstrated to me how gaggles of waddling duckling or cygnets will do as they wish. They find their own way in their life, but always safe in the knowledge that, in the end, the safety of their mother can be counted on. I have seen no coercion from a mother to her young, just tenderness and availability - enabling not forcing.

A factor about wings that is perhaps less well known (or thought about) is how they change the very air that surrounds them when they are in flight. Wings cause the lift, they split the very air around them so that the conditions for flight are met to a gretaer or lesser extent. Wings are flight, but wings are also sanctuary. Wings are dry places for sleeping bird's heads. Wings carry the necessary energy for mechanical flight in the case of big passenger jets. To paint God as one with wings is such a wonderfully helpful image, and teaches us that in God we find safety, warmth, and the ability to lift to heights beyond our dreams - but never alone!