Psalm 119:17-25 – October 9, 2016

Gimel.

Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word. Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law. I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me. My soul is crushed with longing after Your ordinances at all times. You rebuke the arrogant, the cursed, who wander from Your commandments. Take away reproach and contempt from me, for I observe Your testimonies. Even though princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes. Your testimonies also are my delight; They are my counselors.^[1]

The Word of the Lord tells us how to live, move, and have our being. The challenge is not merely reading the Word of God but in gaining insight, knowledge and wisdom from it. Doing so necessitates possessing a depth of understanding that goes beneath and beyond what is simply on the printed page. In Acts Chapter eight, Deacon Philip encountered a treasury official of the Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians reading from the Prophet Isaiah while he was riding in his chariot. He was reading but he had no understanding of what the words meant. Understanding the complexity of reading the Word of God the writer pleads to have his eyes open just so he could behold the wonders in it. So great is his appeal that begs God to refrain from hiding what it all means from him. Were that our desire, our hunger and thirst for the Word of God as great as that of this writer.

Lord, forgive me for shying away from Your Word. Forgive me for investing time and energy into that which has no life. Forgive me and cause to well up in me a desire like that of this writer. May these words be life-giving to us today and be a Word downloaded into us just on time. Amen.

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Ps 119:17–24.