If your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished in my misery.
There’s nothing more important to me in routine and practice than being in Scripture. We can say that Scripture is the Word of God if we take that to mean that by it, we receive God’s Word. The heart of that Word is the good news of God in Christ. God speaks in other ways too, always through Christ whether people recognize that or not.
I have regularly been in Scripture for decades, so naturally for me in spite all of the challenges in it, I am much more acclimated to it than many others. But I don’t think that matters in the least in the point which the psalmist is making. It applies to the one just reading the Bible for the first time, as well as those who are in the beginning stages of their reading and studying of it with many questions.
We have to read it all in the light of God’s revelation of God’s self in Jesus, the heart of that in the four gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we have to read each part in its own context. Somehow God’s Word will come to us from that both in individual reading and meditation which is where we live most of the time, and especially in discerning together in a community of faith.
I can say again and again and again in my life that a renewed and sustained effort to remain in Scripture has helped me immensely in the midst of great challenges, setbacks, and the misery accompanying that. The goal of this is not Bible knowledge, but an interactive relationship with God. And we need to be in all of Scripture, all 66 books and for me the Apocrypha included as edifying works through which God can speak.
As long as we avoid proof texting, reading the Bible as if there’s a one-to-one correspondence to us, or as if it’s flat, or the many other mistakes people make when reading and applying it, it’s good. Even when reading it without such awareness, God’s Word can get through. But such is dangerous as we’ve seen and continue to see to the present day. Only in the light of Jesus, and the love of neighbor as the expression of love for God can the Bible be read in the most helpful way, God’s Word breaking through.
And as the psalmist says, in the delight of all of that, God will sustain us in our misery, and not only help us survive, but even thrive and continue on in faith.
Jesus community 