I’m up about forty minutes early this morning. Why bother going back to sleep when you just woke up from an interesting, unique dream that could bear a message of some spiritual significance?

It wasn’t earth shattering or anything, but there was one passage of note that stood out to me above everything else.

By my standards, I was in bed rather early last night, feeling very sleepy around 10 p.m. I must have been out by 11 and for the first time in awhile, I didn’t wake up all night. Amazing.

So I have this dream and it is the routine crazy stuff of psychedelic colors, floating in air, yada yada yada, and all of a sudden the last portion of it sees me in a church with some folks who sounded like they were from Jamaica.

They were in a rickety building and were having a prayer meeting. I think the building looked more like a schoolhouse now that I think about it, because everyone was sitting at desks.

At any rate, the leader of the prayer group — whom I assumed to be the pastor — stood up and began to direct a prayer in which many began to pray as led by the Holy Spirit. Some spoke in tongues, others interpreted, still others prophesied and many bowed their heads in reverence to the moment.

Then a thought came to me, and I just began to pray it:

“Shelter us under the shadow of Your protection, Lord.”

At that moment the room fell silent and someone in the far corner said, “Pray that again.”

I did. “Shelter us under the shadow of Your protection.” I looked up and the pastor was praying it with me.

“Again.”

“Shelter us under the shadow of Your protection. Hallelujah.”

That basically ended the dream, and I woke up initially trying to get back to sleep but I figured that there could be some sort of significance to that message alone. So I hopped on my computer and ran to BibleGateway.com to check some Scriptures for any reference to “shadow of Your protection.”

I remembered the phrase “shadow of Your wings” from a well-known Christian song, so I looked that up when “protection” didn’t get any results. There were four results for “shadow of Your wings” and they all came from Psalms.

In context, the four references are as follows. NIV, by the way.

Psalm 17:7-9 – “Show the wonder of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me.”

Psalm 36:6-8 – “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find [a] refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.”

Psalm 57:1-3 – “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, for in you my soul takes refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. I cry out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills {his purpose} for me. He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me; Selah. God sends his love and his faithfulness.

Psalm 63:6-8 – “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”

Very interesting passages of Scripture, in that two note that the author is in trouble from physical enemies at the current time, yet the other two also simply reference hiding in God’s wings as a place of simply worship or a respite from the struggles of life.

I wonder if this could be a message to me and my church, in that I had met with my Pastor today and we felt to potentially get the ball rolling on some outreach ministry. Is it a call to prayer for protection from anything that could pop up?

Or could it be a greater message for the church in general? God knows we’re all in for some rough times economically, spiritually, and mentally in the foreseeable future and the only way through it is to rely on the Lord.

Maybe it was a personal reassurance. I’m just not sure.

At any rate, if any of you read this and something jumped out at you, please feel free to share.