Week 26 Psalm 119
I read Psalm 119 today.
I didn’t plan to because it’s pretty long. At first I figured I’d group the twenty-two sub-sections into five-paragraph chunks, read one-a-day and finish the last two on June 30. But in the end I read it all.
The 119th is a psalm about how the bible can help me in some personal ways where I need personal help. I’d forgotten about how 119 hammers away at the importance of the bible. it doesn’t let up. Things it can help me do. Things it can help me avoid. Once I got started it wasn’t so hard to keep at it.
Here’s one example: how can a young man keep his way pure? It’s a pretty good question: how can I live and speak and think and act and feel my way through the day in as decontaminated a way as possible?
119 says the answer is: by living according to your word.
So a long and likely complex process (personal pollution-control-and-management) starts with a fairly simple exercise (read the bible).
I need to start with the reading-your-word part so I can locate the track that I need to start tracking so I can actually start the living-according-to-your-word part so I can begin becoming more immaculate than I am right now.
Becoming a more pristine guy will no doubt have untidy, disconsolating, hit & miss, and complicated days, so it’s fortunate that it begins simple.
It begins with starting to read.
Note: quote from Psalm 119:9 (NLT version)