Word for the day by Christian Education Forum

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The authority of the Word of God
Psalm. 119: 105 – 112

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path (105)

The distance from the bus stop to my village home was a quarter mile. On this particular occasion in my late teens, I arrived at the bus stop alone and late, on an impossibly dark moonless night. No flashlight in hand. As I proceeded home on the rural path, in the pitch blackness, one fearful image gripped my mind. A snake, black and venomous. I took one careful step at a time, trying my best not to veer off into the undergrowth that surrounded the path, where I was sure the snake lay.

For what seemed like an eternity, the latter half of Genesis 3:15 - “he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” - stayed with me as I made slow and steady progress. I took courage from the fact that Jesus was victorious even though the serpent had bruised his heel. Needless to say, I arrived home safe and sound. In that moment, the verse from Psalm 119, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” was powerfully true.

We face all kinds of trials and tribulations in our lives like challenges in our places of work, inter-personal conflicts, illnesses, moral dilemmas and mortality. We have a unique resource, God breathed scripture “that is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”. We may not know what danger lurks ahead of our next step, but as Christians, we hold onto God’s words to help us stay on that straight and narrow path - one step at a time. Psalm 119, from which today’s Bible portion is taken, is a scripture about scripture. Here, the object of the Psalmist’s adoration is primarily the Torah. Each of the twenty-two stanzas start with the corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. To the Psalmist, the scripture was as elementary as his A, B, C’s!

Are the scriptures the A, B, C’s of our lives? Let us strive to make the anchor of our daily vocabulary God breathed A, B, C’s. I like to imagine this anchor as unlike any old anchor that keeps a ship in place. To me scripture is like a sea anchor. A sea anchor is a device that helps keep a ship steady in heavy weather; often in waters so deep that a regular anchor couldn’t touch the bottom. It enables the vessel to make steady progress even in the tempest. Yes, at times, the winds and waves in our lives may feel scary and the waters many, many fathoms deep. But God’s word is the sea anchor. To echo the Psalmist in verse 107, we may suffer much, but the Lord will preserve our life according to His word.
Prayer: Lord, thank you for your divine word that sees us through all our trials and tribulations.
Thought for the Day: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path

Vinod Johnson, Carmel MTC, Boston

Theme of the Week: The authority of the Word of God

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