Monday,
February 6, 2023
Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my
path. I’ve promised it once,
and I’ll promise it again: I will obey your righteous regulations. Psalm 119:105-106
Habits, either good or bad ones, are formed in memory. This morning’s text is one of the first I
learned as a child. In those days memory
verses were part of Sunday School; we memorized and discussed a
different verse each month. Now, many
years later, that verse still calls to me.
That calling is not because of what I must do in parish work as a
pastor, (prepare sermons, counsel, help form the life, ministry, and worship of
a congregation), but rather God’s Word calls me to Him in the ordering and
worship of my own life, one breath at a time.
This devotional blog was born out of a dissatisfaction with
my response to the calling. A decade ago
I felt a lack of discipline, a void of orderliness in reading and reflecting on
God’s Word. I felt unrest, blindness,
and dissatisfaction. So, I did what
Scripture offered – (re)committed my mornings to the light that guides my
pathway. This was a two-fold commitment:
Private Commitment – I wanted solitary time. I’m an
introvert by nature, and, with all those thoughts bumping around in my brain,
its difficult enough to concentrate; I need solitude. So the choice was to get up an hour (or
three) earlier than anyone else. As I
put these words on paper this morning (or the computer screen), the only sounds
are an occasional wind whipping by my window, and the gentle snoring of my dog
on the floor mat, next to my desk chair.
Public Commitment – knowing my track record of beginnings, and fizzled attempts at
routines, I needed some accountability.
Early-on I started publishing these early morning thoughts/reflections
on God’s Word for the congregations I served.
In this way I (somewhat ruthlessly) tapped-into my introvert-born dread
of public humiliation. A private
promise to self can be rationalized-away; a public
promise to others before God, is much more problematic…especially if a preacher
wants to keep his job.
Well…that’s enough therapeutic confession for today. What’s the point?
The point is Psalm 119…God’s Word as a guide…a light that opens up the
truth of what’s on the path ahead. And
who wouldn’t rather have insight when the darkness of uncertainty is all around
us?
Dark times of economic uncertainty, pandemics,
changing morality, and questioning our existence, planetary extinction
possibilities, war, aging, and what is in all those classified documents we all
thought were so well guarded – isn’t it joy to your soul that God’s Word is
unchanging, unparalleled truth you can depend upon, and the best love letter
ever written to you, and me, and everyone?
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
Finding a Straight Path and John Wesley - Homo Unius Libri and The
Secret to King David’s Greatness – Part 4
This is an updated version of
“So Much Anger” published on Rocky Road Devotions January 16, 2014
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translatio
