Ryan: How cool is it that the longest chapter in the entire Bible is all about how wonderful is the word of God? If you search Psalm 119 in the King James Version for “Thy Word,” you’ll learn that the phrase occurs 39 times, or in approximately 22% of all the 176 verses in that chapter. Some highlights: “I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil” (Psalm 119:162 KJV), “Your word is very pure; Therefore Your servant loves it” (Psalm 119:140 NJKV), and of course, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105 KJV). There is a hymn that we sing today that was originally written by Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant that is based on that passage. An interesting sidebar of commonality with yesterday’s post: during some of the “darkest” times in my life, my cassette tapes of Amy Grant always found their way into my rotation, in between the “gangsta” rap and Seattle grunge alternative punk rock. It is truly amazing what power the Word of God has over all who hear it. Even those who try to reject it (as I did) are influenced by the grace, love, and forgiveness that is contained in the Word of the LORD, often without even realizing it.
Samantha: Psalm 119 is certainly the acrostic of all acrostics! I’m not much of a creative writer (as demonstrated by my factual–and mostly dry–blog posts), but I am good at finding patterns and formulas. Reading the Hebrew-English version at Mechon-Mamre is really neat because you can see that every line of this psalm starts with each successive letter of the alphabet. The entire psalm is built around a central theme of, “Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart” (Psalm 119:2). Just thinking through how the psalm is constructed amazes me: the longest chapter in God’s word is organized overall by the alphabet, where the stanzas of each section start with that section’s letter, and then multiple verses inside the section are written about the same topic/theme but in different ways. If I were writing this psalm I would have had it nailed in one sentence, but that would be boring and missing the point. Psalms are expressive ways that make you think deeply about how a topic makes you feel, and I was moved at how God’s word is living and active and how this psalm is applicable to us today even though it was written 3,000 years ago. Therefore, “My heart is set on keeping [his] decrees to the very end” (Psalm 119:112).
