The LORD is your keeper. The LORD is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
Psalm 121:5-6
“Just how can the moon strike you by night? I know about sunstroke, but moonstroke? Come on!” This scornful remark would be a skeptic’s response to this passage. But even believers are often puzzled about its meaning, and others like it.
This is sacred scripture. It is not whimsical poetry, but it is poetry nonetheless. Poetry that makes use of synecdoche, where a word (the part) is used to convey a much larger idea (the whole). The sun by day, the moon by night, all of our seemingly random experiences—the mundane, the unexpected, the delightful, the painful—are in fact marshaled by the LORD Almighty in a way that will ultimately redound to His glory and our good.
This is why the Apostle Paul can say in Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good, to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.”
That all things will ultimately redound to His glory is true even if we live out our days as skeptics. But those who love God, however imperfectly, are destined to share in that glory!
