A Word from the Word

Building on God’s Laws

 

Psalm 119:19–20

I am a stranger on earth; do not hide your commands from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.     NIV

I suppose there comes a time in the life of every one of us when everything seems so impermanent, so transitory. We don’t know where we can find anything that’s permanent, that endures, that’s secure. We ourselves are just like a little breath, a vapor that’s here today and gone tomorrow.

Some people fight that off with some kind of addiction. They turn to alcohol or drugs or they give themselves over to some kind of fleshly indulgence because they don’t want to face the fact of human impermanence; that we are not here to stay forever; that this world is not our final resting place.

But there’s another way to turn. We don’t need to turn to narcotics, to something that drugs us, to something that deadens us and blinds us. There’s another way to turn. “Do not hide your commands from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.” There is something that is permanent in this life. It is readily accessible to us. It’s God’s Word, His laws, His commandments. And as we turn to these and lay hold upon them and begin to build our life on them there comes into our temporary, transient, impermanent life a new kind of solidity, an eternity that’s from the Word of God.