Preserving Life

DEVOTION

PSALMS

PRESERVING LIFE

Ps 119:145-152

145 Qoph

I call with all my heart; answer me, O LORD, and I will obey your decrees. 146 I call out to you; save me and I will keep your statutes. 147 I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word. 148 My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. 149 Hear my voice in accordance with your love; preserve my life, O LORD, according to your laws. 150 Those who devise wicked schemes are near, but they are far from your law. 151 Yet you are near, O LORD, and all your commands are true. 152 Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever.

NIV

The nineteenth day in the longest psalm. Again we can see the distress the psalmist is feeling. His life is in danger from men, but he stays the course in his determination to look to the Lord with all his heart. This goes back to the divided heart issue again. When times are tough and things are not like we would like them, do we seek the Lord, do we call out to the Lord with all our heart, or do we try first to take the situation into our own hands, making our effort to resolve our situation? There are times when sleep even evades us because of worry or stress about something in our life. At some point we lay our head down, determining nothing more can be done about it this day, and tomorrow we will take up the worry, and attempt to find a way to remedy our situation. But, alas, the Lord is the only hope. We call out to him even in the night, as we wake, we think about his word, we mediate on what he has done in our life and he answers and saves us. We rise at dawn and  sit at his feet, in a manner of speaking, reading his word, hearing the still small voice of the Spirit as he guides our thoughts and fingers to record his guidance, his direction, his truth. We put our hope in him and we find peace, contentment and joy in the day. He hears our voice because he loves us. Just as we sit and listen to those who love us, he hears, he listens, and he answers. There are many wicked schemes about trying to influence our thinking. It seems almost impossible to avoid them all. Even if we try to cloister ourselves within Christendom, only being with other believers, never venturing out into the world, the schemes make their way to us. They come in various sizes and forms, but they all stem from our own passions, our own wants, whether they be of a material, emotional or physical nature, they tempt us and at times we fall, we give in to them. How can we allow them access? They are so far from the Lord, from his ways. The schemes are spawned from the evil one’s influence, but we know the Lord is near to us and his word, his commands are true. We put our hope in them, for Jesus is the command of God. All the law is wrapped up in Jesus. For us, he is the law of God. Sure we take note of the commands, like the Ten Commandments mostly, but Jesus said the two commands he gives us, the whole of the law is wrapped up in them. So in that sense we are free from the law, but at the same time we are fulfilling all the law in Jesus, by loving the Lord with a whole heart, mind, soul and strength and loving others as we love ourselves. It is the law of love, which we must obey and all else will follow. We have learned from God and that he has established everything from the beginning and they will last forever. So we make every effort to stay the course, to follow the light, and to ignore the schemes. Yet even in our failure, our weakness, he is there loving us, speaking to us, preserving our life.