Ye that fear the Lord, trust in the Lord: He is their help and their shield.
Psalm 115:11
Watching a group of 5 to 7 year old boys at football practice can be an eye-opening experience. It is an experience when hindsight is 20/20. Our vision at any time is never perfect unless you’re just blessed with almost 20/20 vision. No human could be blessed to be that perfect.
Now back to that football practice…. Imagine that the boys are lined up in two lines facing each other…one behind the other…for a simple football drill—we’ll say tackling. Two boys, who happen to be brothers, are facing off. The bigger one has the football. He runs over little brother and pushes him to the ground, and little brother starts crying. The next player in line behind the big brother sees what happens, and he just shuts down. He won’t do a thing. He refuses to even try because he is scared that he will get hurt. What is a mother to do when this happens at every practice?
Like I said, hindsight is 20/20. Mom has to remember that the boy is a young, young five. He has never done this before. He is a scared little five year old who has no idea what he is doing, AND he wants his daddy because daddy knows what is going on. Mommy doesn’t know because mommy grew up a girl with Barbie dolls, books, and everything sugar and spice. Equate this to being scared, alone, and confused. You have no protection. You have no one to lean on.
O house of Aaron, trust in the Lord: He is their help and their shield.
Psalm 115:10
We have the protection of the shield of God to protect us. God protected the Israelites as they escaped Egypt. He separated a sea for them so that they could escape. He put up a fire barrier to buy them time to flee to the other shore. God provided the Israelites everything they needed as they wandered in the wilderness. God protected David during his reign as king. As long as we trust, fear, and love the Lord, we have His protection. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, we are given the Lord as a shield from the evil in this world.
Just as those little football players have helmets and pads for protection, we have the Lord as our shield for our protection. We don’t have to be like scared children who are doing something new because we have God as our shield. God is our Protector. God is our Savior. God is our Help and our Shield.
Hindsight 20/20: Mommy should have made son wait an extra year before letting him play football. Lesson learned.
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Dear heavenly Father, thank You for being our Shield, our Protector, our Savior. Without You, we would fall with the rest of the world. May Your shield bring strength as we live day to day. In Jesus name.
Amen.
