Weekly Meditation for May 23

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Weekly Meditation
by Ron White
Psalm 1
Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on God's law they meditate day and night.
They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

But the wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgement,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.


The concept which is taught in Psalm 1 is so very simple: "follow the law of the Lord with "delight." Don't follow the law of the Lord and our negative choices will result in misery, bitterness and long term unhappiness. The trouble is, nothing is ever that simple. To forge a positive path through life, we must survive all of the cuts and scrapes...and even deep wounds...administered by the thorns that surround our path. If we don't take the positive path as we travel through life...the longer we walk a crooked path...the deeper the root of bitterness is driven into our character. Knowing where to walk, day by day, moment by moment, can be difficult to discern. But, discern it we must. How do we walk that path with "delight?"

Psalm 1's devastatingly simple answer to knowing how and where to find the positive path is made more complex by a quick glance at the word "law" in Strong's Comprehensive Concordance which reveals that the Hebrew word for law is "Torah," a name given to the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Bible which contain what is traditionally referred to as the Mosaic law. A quick journey through Leviticus alone reveals that, in addition to the well known if not so well understood Ten Commandments, these books attribute to Moses myriad laws that were written for the culture of that time, practices which have little or no application to the world we live in today. How can we "delight in" that law? How then shall we live? Where is this "right" path that we can seek and delight in? Of course, the answer is neither as cut and dried as we might hope, nor is it simple and painless. Is that good or bad? To borrow a phrase, we shall see...

As my faith and knowledge have grown, I have come to a new understanding of the meaning of both "the law of the Lord" and how to delight in it In dealing with her daughter, Jessi, Christine has always believed in the importance of Jessi learning to make healthy decisions for herself. In the same way that God's people, Israel, were given a set of laws/rules to guide their choices, Jessi received from Christine, her Daddy, and others a set of "rules" which she could use as a guide to learn how to make healthy decisions. The other alternative, of course, has been for her to learn by making mistakes and living with the painful consequences. Christine reports - and I'll give my witness - that Jessica has learned a lot more from experiencing the pain of her mistakes than by following rules. You know the rule: we learn our greatest lessons in pain; the deeper the pain, the greater the lesson.

As she has walked this thorny path, Jessi's learning process has been enhanced by knowing in the deepest parts of her that nothing she has ever done or could ever do would take her outside of her Mom's, or her Dad's while he was still alive, or my love for her. For Jessi to know with complete certainty that she is loved even when she is less than she could be gives her the freedom to forgive herself and to do better next time...to learn God's "rules" for life and how to live joyously - "delightedly" - within them.

In the Torah, God gave Israel an ever expanding set of laws to live by... rules to help them figure out how to make life work. One Christian to another: I don't think God was finished when the last old scroll was written. What God has given us since that time is ongoing and continuous unconditional love so that we can walk life's path, learn the lessons here to be learned, make mistakes, forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off (sometimes wiping a little blood off?), and move forward even when we don't live up to what we could be. God gives us relationship...with God and with each other. That is a Torah we can delight in.