We must often have found comfort in that frequent image of the Psalms, that of the mother-bird sheltering her young ones under her wings: ‘He shall cover thee with his pinions and under his wings shalt thou shelter’. We should perhaps find even greater comfort in that image in the realisation that it connotes especially the abiding presence in the tabernacle. For that image came from the tabernacle of the desert. It was there that it originated. It was suggested by God himself when he bade Moses to remind the Israelites how he delivered them from Egypt, and walked with them, led them, carried them through the wilderness as an eagle carries her eaglets: ‘Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob…: You have seen what I have done to the Egyptians, how I have carried you upon the wings of eagles and have taken. you to myself’ (Exod. 19).