February 16, 2025 | By Magdalena Daley | In God
Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of opinions from different people. It wears me out. I hear the point they are making but then I listen to somebody else’s opinion and I think their opinion makes sense too. I might not agree with all of it, but I can see where they are coming from and I understand how they came to that conclusion. It’s exhausting. Especially when everyone is so convinced they are right and things get really heated. I can’t stand it. Can’t everyone just get along? What’s the point of all the arguing? People are just drifting further apart and getting more convinced of their own ideas. Do I have to pick a side? Do I have to agree with one or the other? People are even using God and Scripture to prove their position to be the right one. I feel like I cannot win. I am caught in the middle and I’m made to look like a fool no matter what. A traitor. The bad guy. Whichever side I pick. I do not want to pick. I want to stand in the middle, like a mediator. How else can I pray for both sides? How did Jesus do it? How is he doing it? Does Jesus have opinions? Of course He does, but His ways are so much higher and His perspectives are so much wider than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). He didn’t get caught up in arguments when He was cornered by religious and political leaders of His time. He went after the core issues. He always brought it back to a personal level, to the matters of the heart. It’s not about being right, it’s about being Righteous. It’s about loving well. Who is good – except God?
I am often helped in adjusting my thinking through wordplay. A little humor can shift your perspective. Humor can hold profound truths. One verse that has been popping off the page in my Bible for me is Psalm 68:13. “When you lie down (to rest) among the sheepfolds, You are like the wings of a dove covered with silver, And its pinions with glistening gold”. I want golden, glistening pinions, not being caught up in listening to opinions. I want to lay down in the sheepfold. This word sheepfold in Hebrew is shaphath. It can be translated: “a two-pronged hook for flaying animals on”. This is not a regular sheepfold for your safety. This is a place of sacrifice. These sheep are being led to the slaughterhouse. This is a picture of the Lamb of God. Our only safe place. Our Righteousness. The verb shaphath means “to set, to place, to put (in a specific position), to establish”. It has to do with authority, order, purpose, dedication, like setting a king on a throne or setting a pot on the fire.
If you’re not willing to lay down your life for a person you have no right to lay down the law for that person.
We worship a lamb that was slain. All authority has been given to Him. He is the only true and worthy judge of mankind because He laid down His own life for all of mankind, every single individual on this planet.
“Pinion” can also be used as a verb that means to bind or hold fast, or to disable or impede by binding the arms of someone, to prevent them from moving. I’m imagining myself frantically flapping my wings, trying to “help God”, by being good, putting all my effort into pleasing Him. Now He holds down my arms, my strength, my flapping wings. He covers them in gold actually, in His own Rightousness. The word for “glistening” in Psalm 68:13 is yeraqraq In Hebrew. It means green-shimmering and is often associated with life, fertility and growth but sometimes it’s used in a negative sense as the greenish, pale color that we connect with death and illness. How interesting! From death to life. It reminds me of Jesus’ words in John 12:24: “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”.