Week 51 a psalm
Since I figured I was in pretty good shape to finish reading through by the end of the year I read psalm 119 today.
My plan was to break it up into chunks but I ended up reading it all. It’s long.
It turned out to be a pretty helpful chapter for me since I’m thinking about my reading plan for 2021. Which means I’m deciding about whether to read the OT. I guess lots of people skip the OT for the standard reasons – it’s a tough slog, boring, irrelevant, indecipherable, like that. So 119 makes you rethink those reasons because mysterious-and-incomprehensible don’t seem to be the writer’s opinion of the OT at all.
For example: oh, how I love your law! I think about it all day long.
For example: at midnight I rise to thank you for your just laws.
As an exercise to keep my brain tracking I looked for things that the writer said the Law helped him with. I found more than forty. For example: as pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands.
I wondered how this worked. An OT guy, maybe an iron-age guy, all those centuries ago, pre-NT, but he calls the OT Law: the music of my life.
If I’m totally confident the OT has zero value for me then no need to read it.
But 119 leaves me feeling not totally confident. Like there’s more to it than meets-the-eye.
Note: quotes from Psalm 119:97, 62, 143, 54 (NLT)