Pray:
Caring Father, sometimes I seem to have so much to carry through life. Lighten my load and lift me, dear Lord.
Read:
Psalm 119:49-72
Meditate
Consider: "There is no place where God is not; wherever I go, there God is. Now and always he upholds me with his power and keeps me safe in his love" (author unknown). May these words encourage you today and through the coming week.
Think Further:
Our first paragraph (49-56) focuses on the word "remember." Note how many times the psalmist says "remember." The writer has been going through a difficult time, a time of suffering caused by those who have rejected God's law, but he will not give up on those laws, because they bring comfort to him. Receiving comfort from the law and refusing to give up on it is his way of declaring that he will not give up on YHWH. God's law brings hope and preservation, and therefore, whatever happens, he will declare it in song and through the night. He will remember, and he asks God to remember.
The next paragraph expresses the psalmist's gratitude for the relationship he enjoys with God because he obeys God's law. When he refers to the Lord as "his portion" (57), he is making a statement that God is everything to him--to have the Lord was to have everything he could possibly need. As a result, nothing the wicked can do to him will make him forget the law (61), and nothing they can do will make him forget God.
Our final paragraph is dominated by the word "good" (65,66,68,71). Everything God does is good, and the psalmist prays that God will continue to do good to him because he does take delight in God's law. Even his suffering is actually "good," precisely because it taught him more of God's law (71). And he concludes with a statement about the priceless nature of God's law (72).
Three words: remember, relationship, good. Today we are called to remember what God has done for us in Christ that brings us into relationship and an experience of just how good God truly is.
Apply:
The psalmist thought that God's law was more precious than "thousands of pieces of silver and gold" (72). Is that how you feel?
Pray:
Heavenly Father, You have given me so much. I praise You for every remembrance of Your grace, for the joy of knowing You, and for Your unchanging goodness.
