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The Law of the Lord

  

The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.

By them your servant is warned; in keeping them there is great reward. But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:7-14)

 

The law of the Lord is perfect. That doesn’t mean we like every part of it because the truth of the matter is that we tend to find ourselves at odds with it. But as I’ve said before, it connects us with real reality. And it is refreshing to the soul when things go right. A lot of the work I’m being paid to do has to be done because we don’t like to work in accordance with the way things work. People like to plant six plants across ten or twelve feet of dirt, so the plants are nice masterpiece paintings matted and framed with dirt. It doesn’t work well. The matting and framing turn into weeds, and I come back home for lunch looking like I’ve been in a war with a “short-haired” porcupine. Fortunately, Bidens alba seeds like clothing, not skin.

Then there’s the stuff I’ve been doing over the past couple of days to help some friends do something that should be easy peasy, and every step seems to require a Fred Astaire song and dance routine. I’m quickly reaching the conclusion that I can no longer handle any stress of any kind. How refreshing it would be if things happened the way we think they should. And that’s what the law of the Lord aims toward.

The same is true of the statutes, precepts, commands, and decrees of the Lord. If we obeyed them, life would be so much easier. We’d waste so much less energy.  We’d get in less trouble. We would have great freedom. But we don’t, and we don’t even realize that we’re not. We tend to think that the way we think things should go is the way things should go, and of course, God would have to agree with us because the way we think things should go makes so much sense. How could anyone not see that?

We all so desperately need to pray and sing with David:

Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

          

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