Rejoicing In His Statutes

                 I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. (Psalm119:14)

Hyperbole? Poetic exaggeration? Really? Assuming that the author wasn’t of the opinion that wealth was a great burden over which one should either mourn or grind his teeth, this verse (and many others in this psalm) seems unbelievable. With great riches, one can do what one pleases. One can stop worrying about every purchase. One doesn’t need to fear hard times. Having to memorize and meticulously obey a bunch of rules doesn’t compare.

However, have you see the finger waving, thumbs upping videos on social media. They begin with a fairly typical way of doing things, then wave their finger, telling us, “No, no, no, a thousand times, No!” Then they show us a hack that, if we do as they instruct, will make life so much easier, and we’ll get a thumbs up instead of the finger wave. If we don’t fume about the finger-wave (and I tend to) they can be right. Their hack makes life much easier, prettier, more organized, or otherwise better.

But when God waves His finger at us and says, “Don’t commit murder. Don’t covet. Don’t lie.” we fume. Even if agree with those particular life hacks, there seem to be an endless supply of God’s statutes, including stuff like not planting two types of crops in a field or not wearing clothing made from two types of cloth. Of course, the answer is that some of the Law was cultural. There were reasons for those laws. If you read through the book of Acts, many of those laws were not transferred to the gentile Church.

That doesn’t mean that all laws are optional or that the cultural laws might not turn out to be wise. We don’t always understand the reasoning behind hacks we see on social media. That doesn’t mean they can’t be wise. Sometimes, we come to understand the reason after we’ve been doing them for some time. There may be good reason to rejoice in following God’s statutes.