Day AND Night

It's Saturday afternoon and I couldn't have planned a more enjoyable and relazing one then I've had today, despite a few casualties while making breakfast, but we won't go there. :) With no where to rush off to I've enjoyed listening to worship music and digging into the word. My friend, Kaylin, bought me the Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible last year, as my going away present from college. It's a great resource to have and I used it this morning for some further studying.

If you haven't heard Chris Quilala's version of the song "Dance With Me" you've got to check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBp7pTXI7JQ . For those of you who know my "repeat" tendencies when I like a song it's no surprise to you that I've been listening to that song over and over all morning. It just makes something in me rise up. It's almost as if the depths of me are agreeing with the words saying "yes, yes!".

So, as this song has been replaying over and over (just hit play again actually) and stirring my heart for worship what better place to start reading then in Psalms. Look at David, the man after God's own heart was also the man who wasn't afraid to dance in the streets before the Lord, even when his wife Michal looked on scornfully. See 2 Samuel 6: 14-16.

The verses I want to share today are simple, yet challenging. They come from Psalm 1, verses 1-2.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor siteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he mediate day and night.

After reading these verses I had a few questions. 1st, what does blessed mean in this context. Sometimes when I think of blessed I think of having a house, a family, a place to live etc. But when I went to the root word I discovered that for this verse it means happiness or how happy! We'll come back to that...

My next question was about the words delight and law, how can we delight in a law? Let's be honest, off hand that sounds sightly boring. I then read that the word delight means to incline towards something, to desire a valuable thing. What valuable thing are we to be desiring? The verse says God's law but the word actually means His instruction. It's the spoken word of God! Those words always have our best interest in mind!

My last question referred to meditating on that law day and night. What exactly are we being called to do? To meditate means to speak, study, and ponder.

Now is the use of day and night figurative to in the good times and bad times or literal to day and night? The word "night" gives both the literal and figurative definitions as possibilities but the word day is a literal translation. Therefore we can conclude the it's counter word, night, is also referring to the literal translation. Wow, so we are literally called to ponder his words even in the night!

All in all these verses say: How HAPPY is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the guilty and morally wrong or join in the life of or conversation of the sinful, nor dwell in the place of scorners and mockers. But how happy will the person be who is drawn and inclined towards the valuable instruction of God. But it doesn't stop there, we are to speak of, study, and ponder that instruction both in the day and in the night! If you read on further in verse 3 it actually talks of the prospering that will occur for those who mediate. "whatsoever he doeth shall prosper".

Chris has been challenging me to really renew my mind with God's words every day and I think these verses line up right with that. We can be surrounded by junk everywhere we go but we are not to take part in it. We will truly be happy when we focus on God's truths every day.

But what about the night? I think we often dismiss this as a figurative statement. How great of a job has the enemy done with flooding around thoughts with worries and fears as we lay in bed at night? How often do we make an effort to fall asleep meditating on His truths, connecting our spirit with His as we fall asleep. I can't tell you how many times I have dreamt about something that happened earlier in the day or something I was thinking about as I fell asleep. What if our thoughts were so consumed by Him that even our dreams were filled with Him. Talk about waking up refreshed!

It's a bit hard for me to articulate the challenge that rose in my spirit after reading these verses but I pray that the same stirring will arise in your spirit. I want to defeat the enemy by starting my day in His truth, continue my day in His truth, and even committing my night to it!