How certain your promise is! How I love it! Psalm 119:140, GNT

 

I love beautiful paintings. Recently, while visiting an attorney’s office, I saw a truly beautiful painting by Cornelius Bosch. I have since been back twice to have a look at the painting. I’m not entirely sure why I like it so much, but every painting talks to me in a different way.

 

The same is true of the Bible. God’s word is like a painting with different colours and subjects. Every book in the Bible tells us something about God and all of these together completes the full picture we have of him.

 

We all see/look at paintings in a different way and the same is true when we read the Word of God. I, for instance, like to read a complete chapter in one sitting, but not necessarily every day. The most important thing is not when or how one reads the Bible, but the fact that we do read it and that after reading it, we ruminate on what we have read and then put it into practise.

 

The poet who wrote Psalm 119 put the wonder of God’s painting in many words. In this context, word, law and promise are just different words for the same idea. Psalms 119:130 says, “The explanation of your teachings gives light and brings wisdom to the ignorant,” our verse for today tells us: “How certain your promise is”, and verse 160 states, “The heart of your law is truth ...”. Moreover, the first verse reads: “Happy are those whose lives are faultless, who live according to the law of the Lord.”

 

God’s painting is perfectly rounded off by the words of John 1:1: “In the beginning the Word already existed; the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now, we do not talk about a written Word, but the Word as God himself.

 

Prayer: Thank you Lord that your Word brings light into this dark world to help us find our way. Amen