Psalm 119:137-144 (New International Version)
You are righteous, Lord, and your laws are right.
The statutes you have laid down are righteous; they are fully trustworthy.
My zeal wears me out, for my enemies ignore your words.
Your promises have been thoroughly tested, and your servant loves them.
Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts.
Your righteousness is everlasting and your law is true.
Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands give me delight.
Your statutes are always righteous; give me understanding that I may live.
THINK: A fundamental issue in the life of faith is knowing how to distinguish who we are and who God is. What scope and power does the word of God have, as opposed to ours. The psalmist says that everything that has to do with the word of God is excellent, correct, just and faithful; the word of God is authentic, true and genuine, and not false; it is permanent and constant, and it is the source of all truth.
We must remember that, in the Hebrew worldview, the truth is not simply the correspondence between a phenomenon and its explanation, only on the intellectual level, as the ancient Greeks used to say. When we read here that the word of God is a source of truth, it does not refer to the purely intellectual plane, but it enters into the field of ethics. The truth according to the biblical worldview is the correspondence between what is said and what is done. That’s why we find the expression "walk in the truth", which means the way to conduct oneself through life.
The word of God is delight and joy, it is the enjoyment of life, it is the key to happiness and human flourishing. In short, the word of God is life. Without it, we are simply dead.
On the contrary, we are small, weak and fickle. We are subject to our emotional outbursts, our partisan jealousy, our denominational squabbles, our sectarian and divisive affiliations. We have rivals who constantly remind us of our pettiness. We are despised, and when we feel this contempt, it becomes a gift from God, a thorn in the flesh to always remind us that God's grace is more than enough for us. As human beings, we are filled with grief and anguish, because we do not have everything under our control. We do not even own our lives, and we do not have the minute of our death in our power. That's how small we are, and that's how big the word of God is.
When we realize this, the tasks of ministry stop being a heavy burden, and they begin to become a delight. Because the important thing is the word of God and not the imperfect instruments that we are. “For the word that burned your lips is flying like a glowing ember in the wind. You don’t know who may be lighted by it, there will be a blazing burning fire. It will be the Spirit’s warming fire”.
PRAY: Holy God, teach us to live in the power of your word. Give us your grace so that your power may be made perfect in our weakness. Amen.
GO: A hope without failures, a love without fuss, a joy without excuses and a peace without explanations.
