DAY 25 · Psalm 5:11-12
“Let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy. For you bless the righteous, O Lord; you cover him with favor as with a shield.” — Psalm 5:11-12, ESV
The people of God are not called to survive the age. They are called to sing in the middle of it. Psalm 5:11 and 12 move from a warning about the flatterer straight into the worship of someone who has taken refuge in God, and the whole distance between those two postures, warning and worship, is nothing more and nothing less than the presence of God.
We live in a world full of anxiety, with a creeping sense that everything is falling apart at the same time, in more places than we can keep track of, and into that exact world the people who take refuge in God are called to something that sounds almost unreasonable: joy.
Let them sing for joy, David says, not because circumstances suddenly changed or the world finally earned it, but because the God they have taken refuge in has never once changed, no matter how much everything around them has, and that is the whole reason the joy is even possible.
Spread your protection over them is the next line, and the picture underneath it is a mother bird covering her young with her own wings, full, warm, and complete, not the absence of trouble but a presence right in the middle of it. You cover him with favor as with a shield, and that favor was never meant to be decorative. It is armor. It is the exact thing that changes how the whole situation ends.
That is the promise inside Psalm 5:11 and 12. This is the song of the refugee, so sing it loudly, right in the middle of everything, because the shield is already over you.
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