For the past year or so, I've had a tough time staying consistently in God's Word. The regular readings at Marannook were great, and I profited so much from them, but for some reason, I just stopped having a regular time of reading after that summer. I'd be tempted to say that I just became to dependent on the schedule, or something like that, and couldn't adjust to the "freer" college schedule. There are a lot of reasons I'd be tempted to give, but really it all boils down to my faithlessness. Considering that I lead a fellowship group and do music at RUF, you'd think I'd have more of an incentive to stay in the Word, but that wasn't about to be enough to stop my apathy.

It's not like I haven't read Scripture or anything. I'll read passages and sometimes my mind will be so blown away that I'll be fixated on one word of the Bible for months at a time. For example, the contradiction "but" in Ephesians 2:1-10 set my head spinning with all of the meaning of that single word. I also fell in love with Genesis 3.

I have decided to make myself read through the Psalms, and hopefully I will be able to keep that up. Lord willing, of course (but of course, he wills it).

Psalm 1 was wonderful to read. It seemed to really pack a punch too, considering that verse 2 says "his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates both day and night." It was very convicting to see that the righteous man is daily in the Word. Even more convicting was the image of the tree planted by the water. If we were to imagine ourselves as those trees, and really take a hard look at ourselves, we would not see the beautiful, shady tree (without a single brown leaf!) we see when we picture that scene. We are warped, and we move our roots away from the river. We so often want to have nothing to do with God's precepts, even if they are essential for our lives.

But Psalm 1 isn't a poetic way of saying "This is how you should live." Oh, it is that, but it is also so much more. David wasn't writing about any righteous man he knew in Israel. He was writing of the righteous man he knew by faith. Psalm 1 is about Christ, who is truly the only man who has ever meditated on God's law constantly, finding his delight in the Word of God. If we look at Jesus' life, we do not see the things we so often associate with the word "prosper," like wealth, fame, social acceptance. We say we love Jesus' personality, but I'm betting if he showed up in the South, we might think his manners were a little bit underdeveloped. And yet, Jesus was the only person to truly fulfill this psalm.

If we read this Psalm and just see a set of rules, and if we're being honest with ourselves, we are crushed. We see an image of someone we can never hope to be. But that is precisely where Paul yells at us, "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David!"

God, in his mercy, gave his fallen creation the law so that we may know the best life possible. If that wasn't enough, he sent his Son to both live the life the Law descibes AND to atone all our transgressions and omissions of that law. He lived a life of perfect obedience, and then took our sins upon himself to justly and mercifully bear our punishment. And then we are credited with his righteousness! God will look on his people as the blessed that the first psalm describes. Still further, the Father and Son sent the Spirit to equip us so that our lives may in some dim way reflect Christ.

And when you think about that, well, then the fact that these few verses make up a Psalm makes sense! How could you not want to praise God when you think about all that?