"Scoping out the shade!"

Psalm 121:5

The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

Sometimes the simplest of verses in the bible can bring you tremendous encouragement. When my older brother and I were young boys, during the summers, we would visit our dad in Las Vegas, Nevada. Needless to say it gets extremely hot there. The last time I visited, in 1996, the temperature was 111 degrees at 11:00 at night. On those summer days, you could have literally ‘fried an egg’ on the pavement…that’s how hot it would get.

As I think back on those times, I have such fond memories of literally running around town with nothing but our swimming trunks on, no shirt, no shoes (not even flip flops). The pavement was so hot that you would have to scope out little bits of shade from point to point, to make sure you didn’t burn the bottom of your feet. I vividly remember running so fast, with the heat growing in intensity until finally with what seemed like, not a moment to spare, we would find that little bit of shade and with it instant relief.

Isaiah 25:4 says, You have been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat. The Lord is our keeper…the shade at our right hand. When things are getting too hot around us, when we feel like we can’t take it anymore, when we feel like we are not going to make it, He provides that perfect amount of shade that brings instant relief.