Meditation | Daily Devotional
“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” -Psalm 119:97
What have you been daydreaming about lately? Or, perhaps more to the point, what do you tend to look forward to after a long day of work?
At this time of year, we’re usually about a month into baseball season, which means my honest answer would have to include catching a few innings of a ballgame once the kids are in bed. But even with one fewer thing to distract me, I’ll still admit that it’s an ongoing project to keep God’s Word, His character, and His praise-worthiness at the forefront of my mind and heart.
As C.S. Lewis famously put it, “We are far too easily pleased.”
Compare that to the heart behind Psalm 119. Starting out one of the 22 poems that make up the psalm—a pattern that traces the Hebrew alphabet—the psalmist confesses his love for God’s law. And not only does he love God’s law, he confesses that it’s the very thing that keeps his attention riveted all day long.
Throughout this poem (verses 97-104), the psalmist also refers to God’s law as His “commandment,” “testimonies,” “precepts,” “words,” and “rules.” It should remind us of the truth from Deuteronomy 8 Jesus quoted to Satan under temptation in the desert: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
Just like Jesus would demonstrate in His great battle centuries later, the psalmist rejoices at how God’s word has equipped and outfitted him to do battle against sin and temptation.
We tend to see laws and rules as unfortunate, inconvenient realities in our lives. We know how easily rules can be abused by those who make and enforce them. Parents, governments, even at times police officers have all been guilty of either setting unjust laws or enforcing just laws unjustly. We also know that many laws limit our freedom—keeping us from driving as fast as we otherwise might, parking where it’s more convenient, or going about our business as freely as we were able to six weeks ago.
But before we let ourselves off the hook and excuse ourselves from loving God’s law, consider that even under the very best of circumstances, our first parents still bucked against the one command God gave them. It takes a miracle to change our hearts from self-focused haters of God’s law into lovers of God’s law. Clearly, this is a change that had taken place in the psalmist’s heart.
“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey in my mouth,” the psalmist proclaims. God’s law isn’t an unfortunate limitation, and it’s not just a useful tool. Although it is through meditating on God’s law all day long that the psalmist gains wisdom (v. 98), understanding (v. 104), and holiness (v. 104), it is also his delight!
One way we might put it, then, is that if you cut him, he’d bleed God’s word. And keep in mind, the psalmist is writing centuries before Jesus came on the scene. All the psalmist could meditate on was God’s word revealed in the Old Testament law, history, and prophets. All the psalmist could see were the shadows; we see the Substance, who is Christ Himself.
How much more, then, can we rejoice in and meditate on God’s word? May it be sweet in our mouths and our meditation all the day.