Finding the Shade

We love to moan about our weather.  It's too cold, too wet or too hot.  Our country isn't geared up for the heat, the snow or the heavy rain.  We don't cope too well.

Of course this week has been full of waterfights (always ends in tears), ice creams (not from the van that plays music - when the music is playing it means they've run out, doesn't it?) and trying to find the relief of the shade.

Our lives get hot sometimes too.  The pressure is too much.  Work is relentless.  The demands of our children are exhausting.  We carry financial burdens of debt.  Our relationships are difficult.  We worry, constantly, about our children.  It's just too much.

And then we watch the news and see the heat in other nations too.  The horrors of Gaza.  The ethnic cleansing in Iraq and Syria.  Plane crashes that seem to happen every week at the moment.  The fear of nuclear weapons.  Politicians that are increasingly lacking in integrity.  

And we feel like there is no relief from the tormenting downward pull on our emotions.  We are surrounded. The heat seeps through our skin, burning us from the inside out.  This is no comfortable sunny day.  This is the heat of a ferocious fire, pressing down on us and bringing us to a place of surrender, until we shout 'no more'.

But there is some shade.

The Lord watches over you - The Lord is your shade at your right hand;

The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.               Psalm 121

When the heat of the day is too much, find the shade.  He is our shade.  He brings sweet and refreshing relief from the devastating burning that threatens to wreck us.  

We don't have to sit in the midday sun, sweating and wilting.  We are watched over by a God who promises to breathe coolness over us.

So, find the shade.  It's good.

And pray for those imprisoned in the fire - those in Gaza, Iraq and other nations, that they will know this shade too.  May this fire of destruction that is ravaging it's way across the world be stopped in it's tracks so that these people with such soul-destroyed sadness in their eyes can know the freedom that comes from sitting in the coolness and peace of the shade.