Tag Archives: Psalm 1

How to Live

bible, faith, God, Lectionary, life, Religion, theology, , ,

What do I want to do?
How do I want to be?
In what way shall I live?
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Do I want to grow
and bear abundant good fruit?
Or dry out
and blow in the wind?

Shall I do what God asks?
Or what I fancy?
Shall I go his ways
or my own?
Follow God’s instructions
or make it up as I go along?

How does God want me to live?

Psalm 1

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither –
    whatever they do prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!
    They are like chaff
    that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
    nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
    but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

Advertisements

What is Success?

bible, faith, God, hope, Lectionary, Religion, theology, , , ,

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

There is nothing finer than trees growing by a river.  With constant nourishment for their roots, they flourish and grow magnificently.

Psalm 1  (CEV)

The Way to Happiness

1 God blesses those people
    who refuse evil advice
    and won’t follow sinners
    or join in sneering at God.
2 Instead, the Law of the Lord
    makes them happy,
    and they think about it
    day and night.

3 They are like trees
    growing beside a stream,
trees that produce
fruit in season
    and always have leaves.
Those people succeed
    in everything they do.

4 That isn’t true of those
    who are evil,
    because they are like straw
    blown by the wind.
5 Sinners won’t have an excuse
    on the day of judgment,
    and they won’t have a place
    with the people of God.
6 The Lord protects everyone
    who follows him,
    but the wicked follow a road
    that leads to ruin.

Sometimes it seems as though the opposite of what this Psalm says is true – that those who do the wrong things get on in life, whilst those who try to do the right thing can seem to struggle.

But ‘Doing the Right Thing‘, following God’s ways is about more than instant gratification and apparent wordly success.  It’s about being grounded in God, following his way, and looking to those things of ultimate worth with him; allowing him to feed us and nourish us and following his ways.  God’s ways may not always look “successful”, but that depends on where you look for your success, and who’s judging it.

Psalm 1

Hints on Happiness

bible, faith, God, Lectionary, life, Religion, theology, ,

Psalm 1

BOOK I

(Psalms 1-41)

The Way to Happiness

1 God blesses those people
    who refuse evil advice
    and won’t follow sinners
    or join in sneering at God.
2 Instead, the Law of the Lord
    makes them happy,
    and they think about it
    day and night.

3 They are like trees
    growing beside a stream,
trees that produce
fruit in season
    and always have leaves.
Those people succeed
    in everything they do.

4 That isn’t true of those
    who are evil,
    because they are like straw
    blown by the wind.

By McKay Savage from London, UK [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

5 Sinners won’t have an excuse
    on the day of judgment,
    and they won’t have a place
    with the people of God.
6 The Lord protects everyone
    who follows him,
    but the wicked follow a road
    that leads to ruin.

??????????????????????

So the way to be happy is to refuse bad advice, to not sneer at God, but to read and think about God’s word. As trees draw life from the stream, so the wise draw their strength from God.