The weather has been the story lately. A or over parts of the country, and across the ocean in France and Spain, wildfires driven by relentless heat have forced more than a quarter of a million people from their homes. It is hard to imagine — leaving everything behind because the very air has turned against you.
Here in Ravenna we know a milder version of it. Every summer we get a stretch of days where the humidity settles in like a wet blanket, the corn stands still in the fields, and folks move a little slower on the way to the mailbox. We have all felt that longing for a patch of shade, a cool porch, a tall glass of something with ice in it. The body knows what it needs when the heat presses down.
God Knows What Shade Means to Us
It is no small thing that Scripture reaches for the picture of shade when it wants to tell us who God is. Listen to the words of the psalmist: "The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore" (Psalm 121:5-8).
Those words were written by people who lived without air conditioning, without weather apps, without much shelter at all from a sun that could genuinely kill you. To them, shade was not a luxury. Shade was life. And when they said God is our shade, they meant that He stands between us and the thing that would burn us up. He is the one who blocks the worst of it.
The Heat We Can't See on the Map
Not all heat shows up on a weather map. Some of you are walking through a season that feels scorching in its own way — a diagnosis that won't quit, a marriage running dry, a worry about a child that keeps you up at two in the morning. There is a kind of pressing-down that no fan can cool, a dryness the rain can't reach.
I want you to hear that the same God who is shade for the traveler in the desert is shade for you. He does not always remove the heat. Sometimes the sun keeps shining. But He puts Himself between you and the full force of it. "He shall preserve thy soul," the psalm says. Not necessarily an easy road, but a kept soul. A guarded heart. A presence that goes with you on the way out the door and welcomes you back home.
The One Who Walked Through the Fire
The prophet Isaiah gives us a promise worth carrying into any hot season: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee" (Isaiah 43:2). Notice the little word through. God does not always promise a way around the fire. He promises a way through it, and Himself beside us every step.
That is exactly what we see in Jesus. He walked into the full heat of this world — the rejection, the cross, the weight of every sin — so that we would never have to face the fire alone. He took the smiting that should have fallen on us. Because of Him, the last word over your life is not scorched earth but a well-watered garden, a shade that never lifts.
So when you see the headlines about heat and fire and folks fleeing their homes, let it do two things in your heart. Let it stir compassion — pray for those families, and give if the Lord prompts you. And let it turn your eyes upward to the Keeper who neither slumbers nor sleeps. Whatever is pressing down on you today, step into His shade. He has been standing at your right hand the whole time.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.