Week of Praise, Day 7

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Psalms 119.

If you've never looked at that chapter closely, it's worth a look.

It's actually a pretty amazing piece of literature; comprised of 22 eight-verse sections, it is a tribute to the Word...God's laws, precepts and prophecy.

Each of those eight -verse sections has a label on it.  Most folks don't realize that those labels are letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The kicker is that, in the Hebrew, each verse in each section starts with the letter at the top of that section.

It's a massive acrostic poem.

And it extols the glory of God's word.

God inspired the ancients to write His message to us, then sovereignly moved on the scholars of the day to collect all the law, the prophets, the gospels, the epistles...even the history...into an anthology, and then protected that anthology so that we have, today, a book that is unique in all the world.

He gave us his Word.

A lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Ps 119:105)

It brings peace, and keeps me from stumbling (Ps 119:165)

It contains wondrous things (Ps 119:18)

It is better than gold and silver (Ps 119:72)

It is established firmly in the heavens forever (Ps 119:89)

It brings life (Ps. 119:93)

It brings understanding (Ps 119:104)

...and a whole bunch more.  Just in that one chapter.

We live in a unique time, when the Word is easy to read and study by the common person...in not-so-long-ago-history, it was not available to regular folks like me.

Some of the most horrible persecution occurred when the organized church killed folks for the crime of possessing an English translation of scriptures...which is astonishing now.

Even when an English translation was legalized, printed Bibles were rare.  One Bible per family....that was handed down as an heirloom (One of my aunts has a Bible that was originally purchased by my great-great-great-???-great grandfather in the 1800's, and handed down through the family, with difficult to read records of deaths, births and marriages in the family).

The family owned the Bible, but it was preserved, and read aloud by Mom or Dad, if at all.

Now I personally own about 6 Bibles...and we have a myriad of translations available on line...even Hawai'i Pidgin.  We have ACCESS to the Word; any time, any place.

And I'm amazed and grateful.