“I rejoice in following Your statutes as one rejoices in great riches. I meditate on Your precepts and consider Your ways. I delight in Your decrees; I will not neglect Your Word.” Psalm 119:14-16
Recently in Sunday School, Pastor Fred Jantz challenged us students of Psalm 119 to meditate on the Law and how good it is.
Let's face it: No one wants to be told what to do. We all want to go our own way. All the law does is make me do things I don't want to do and keep me from doing the things I do want to do, right?
And yet, Psalm 119:7 tells us, "I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn Your righteous laws."
So, in reluctant obedience, I took up the challenge and thought about how the Law of the Lord is good. And my mind meandered back to the Vincent Thomas Bridge.
It was possibly the most terrified I had been in my life.
While living in Long Beach, I drove to San Pedro across the Vincent Thomas Bridge. It rises some 365 feet above the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to allow container-laden ocean-going vessels to pass beneath -- even at high tide -- with lots of room to spare.
That's about 36 stories above the water. And for someone whose legs get rubbery even watching people look over a balcony, it was a stomach-churning, white-knuckle drive.
I forced myself to look straight ahead, seeing the gentle up-and-down curve of the bridge. With gratitude, I noticed stout guardrails that surely could withstand the force even of a semi-trailer if it plowed into its side. There was some assurance there that the guardrails offered more than a passing safety.
So what does such a bridge have to do with the Law of the Lord?
What if there were no guardrails? How many of us would be distracted by phones or food or even changing stations on the radio and drive off the side?
And I realized that meandering of the mind was actually a structured remembrance. That trip across the bridge is a symbol of life itself. The Law of the Lord provides guardrails in life to keep us from plummeting off the edge.
Without guardrails, we would simply veer off the safe path to our own destruction.
Yes, meditating on the Law of the Lord IS good. it reminds me how, even though I willfully disobey every now and then (wink, wink -- probably much more than that), it is the Law of the Lord that keeps us safe.