“Blessed is the person who does not follow the advice of wicked people, take the path of sinners, or join the company of mockers. Rather, he delights in the teachings of the Lord and reflects on His Teachings day and night.” Psalm1:1-2
I am trying to imagine what life would be without the deluge of distractions we encounter in our daily lives. As a person with a touch of self-diagnosed Attention Deficite Disorder, I am perpetually distracted from the task at hand, hopping up to attend to some unimportant detail, then realizing an hour later that I was doing something before my distractions. Now…what was it…?
The writer of this Psalm had his own category of distractors with which he was contending. We can hear his heart’s desire to:
- Shut out the voices of “wicked people” in his life who had lots of advice for him. But it was not good advice, as it was not coming from godly people.
- Walk a different Path than the “normal” sinners in his life.
- Avoid hanging out with people who love mocking good choices in the face of “what everybody else is doing.”
The writer of this Psalm knew what it meant to follow an unpopular Path. He could differentiate between choices that lay before him. Whether temptations that were not part of the Path God had given him to walk, or doing “what everybody else is doing,” or flat-out mocking those who have no love nor respect for the Path that God has laid out for His Children as we walk through life in this world. . . Can you relate?
The writer of this Psalm knew what it was to have a completely different focus in life than all the people around him. He had learned to focus his thoughts on the Words of his Lord. He had focused his mind on the teachings of God….drinking in the Words, thinking about them, and considering how those Words applied to his own daily life. The Words had to be given time in his mind to translate them from a page, and into real-life applications in his daily life.
To “reflect…day and night…” requires intentionality. “Reflecing” needs time. When you look into a pool of water, or in a mirror, time has to pause as your eyes adjust to the image before you. Ladies, especially, can relate to focusing to make sure we’re not going to walk out the door with some strange foreign object stuck on our face. We may even use a magnifying lens to get into the finer details. We’re not merely looking at what our own eyes see, but we are thinking about what others will see of us as well. And if we are taking the time to really look . . . “reflect” . . it’s because it matters to us.
God wants us to be as attentive to His Words and how they apply to our own hearts, thoughts, and actions as we are to our outward appearance. His Priority is always our heart. That matters most to Him.
Knowing God’s Word is merely the beginning of the Process of knowing God Himself, and His Purposes for our time on earth. “Delight in His teachings” requires time. . . intentionality . . . stillness . . . and a heart that is soft and attentive to whatever Word He has for me personally.
Time. . . attention. . . stillness. What a sweet way to begin a day. It’s not a chore. It is a delight.
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