Loving the Word of God

“O how love I thy law! It is my meditation all the day. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” –Psalm 119:97, 105 (KJV) (Read all of Psalm 119.)

Loving the Word of God, the Bible, should be a very natural affection of the Christian. How else except in the pages of His Holy Word do we read and hear His words day by day?

Set aside a time each day to read and meditate upon God’s Word. Make this spiritual exercise as vital to your life as eating food and taking drink. The Word of God is “sweet unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”—Psalm 119:103.

The longest of the 150 psalms, Psalm 119, is an extensive poem in praise of the Word or the Law of God. Writing with a grateful and overflowing heart, the psalmist invites us to love, rejoice in, learn from and heed the Word of God.

We are most fortunate. The Bible is easy for us to access. We no longer live in the age when Bibles were chained to pulpits of churches to insure that they remained where priests or elders could read them to the people. Moreover, most of us have the capability of reading, and with our available copies of The Word, we can read and interpret for ourselves, applying its truths to our lives and absorbing them for our edification and meditation.

Do you sometimes take the Word of God for granted? Do you think it will always be available, and therefore you can neglect somewhat its daily wisdom, thinking that it will be accessible when you do take time to peruse its pages? We pray availability of God’s Word will be the case as long as life lasts for us. But it could be taken away. We could enter a period of persecution; we could be buffeted for our faith; our health could fail, and due to mental or visual decline we could no longer read God’s Word. Read and study it now, while nothing (except your choice) prevents your daily, regular rendezvous with the Word of God!

Therefore, it behooves us to study His Word prayerfully, commit passages to memory for the night watches when we need the comfort of His Word, and store its truth in our memory for ready access and guidance. Here is a prayer for today or any day about how I should love God’s Word: “Consider how I love Thy precepts: quicken me, O Lord, according to Thy lovingkindness.” --Psalm 119:159.

c Ethelene Dyer Jones; Friday, February 26, 2010