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Broken and the Blessed,Lent Day 6

by David Joynt on March 06, 2017


DAY 6

MONDAY–MARCH 6, 2017

PSALM 119

 

 

Our culture is not very positive about the law, although we are famously litigious, instituting all manner of lawsuits. Notice in our Psalm the devotion, excitement, and admiration expressed for the gift of God’s law. Psalm 119 describes the joy of obeying, and the fascination of studying, God’s law. All kinds of words and images reinforce these sentiments. We are encouraged to “delight” in the law, to be “happy” in it, to long for it, revere it, love it, taste and discover its sweetness, and to see it as a lamp to our feet and light for our path. Wow! Often today, the law of God is mocked as outdated and culturally limited, or seen as an authoritarian abridgement of our sovereign individual freedom. What a startlingly different set of feelings and responses.

 

 

How many positive adjectives are used to describe the law in this very long Psalm?

 

 

How do you feel about God’s law?

 

 

FAMILY TIME:

Eat a piece of honey toast or a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

Discuss what is sweet about God’s law.

 

Tags: law, joy of obeying

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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