In your wonderful law:

Recently I was looking at verses of the day.  The verse of the day as of recently was Psalm 119:18, which says,“Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law.”  The Lord has a law that is gracious, loving, and provides us with a great amount of freedom.  However, we often as people, including myself, can look at items in the law and not understand how much value it will have on our futures.  How much happier we will be when we don’t live with the anger, sadness, or the things of this world that are actually very much bringing us down or negatively impacting us.  This is even when those items of the world seem exciting, passionate, and mesmerizing.  

When I was a kid, I often begrudgingly followed the laws of my parents.  I remember the one that I despised the most was going to bed at my bed time.  I am a night owl still to this day, and I felt as though all my playing and creative works were being shortened by my mom telling me it was time to go to bed.  However, as many of you know, the reason my mom chose bed time was to make sure I started living a healthy lifestyle, and one can only have a healthy lifestyle when getting enough sleep.  As I have grown up, sleep is not the law or the item that I have needed to focus on.  I actually now, of course, get very excited when I have the chance to sleep more.  I love the chance to go to bed early and sleep in late.  I have found that the best way to function and stay good at my job as a teacher is through having enough sleep.  

I have found that as I get older, I know that I need to avoid the other adult temptations that can come from wanting to be like everyone else.  It can be just as easy to fall into temptation as an adult as it is when you are a young child.  It just seems as though the items of temptation are a bit different.  I have noticed that I really need to make sure I don’t always talk like some of the other friends that I am hanging out with.  When I am with my friends from school, who are wonderful and whom I love, I can sometimes start to gossip or even use words and phrases flooded with profanity.  They start doing it (mainly because we have stressful jobs and need to vent) that soon I start to do that as well, and there are other times when I am the one who initiates the gossip or the venting with profanity.     

Recently I was watching a Youtube channel called “The Take.”  This show takes a look at something that is shown in shows, movies, and other entertainment.  I watched one about a good girl who is described in many movies and television shows as a girl who is innocent, follows the rules, and likes to be nice and timid.  The T.V shows and movies love to take that girl and somehow make her eventually go bad, where she breaks rules, and is more experimental with drinking and sex.  This is not supposed to be considered the bad moment of the movie, but rather the moment where the girl finally finds herself.  The greatest example of this is Sandy from Grease.  This did make me realize that we really do, in life, idealize those who don’t follow the law or love to be “bad.” The ones who are following the law and are timid need to change to be more like everyone else.  That is their true self.   

Even though the world provides a lot of temptations and objects of distraction, there are ways that we can fight the desire and urge to break the law of God.  The biggest thing that we can do in order to appreciate the law is to spend more time in it.  We can’t follow or learn from God’s law if we never read or study it.  I understand that it is not always easy to read the Bible.  I love to do Bible studies over Christian books by Christian authors.  I think that this is important too, and there is a lot that we can learn from Christian books and authors, but there are times when I need to be better about spending time in the Bible and really diving in deep to God’s word.  The Law comes from the Bible.  Christian authors study it and write books on it, but it is important to get the law from the source itself.  

Another verse that discusses this topic is Psalm 119:9-11 which also happens to be in the same psalm as the verse listed above. “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.  I have hidden your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.”  This was a verse that I have put to memory in this past year, which is incredibly fitting as this verse talks about hiding his word in our hearts and memorizing pieces of scripture.  There are a lot of benefits to memorizing scripture including being able to use it when you are tempted or in a bad situation. We are all tempted to sin in our own different ways.  This could be in our impatience, our gossip, our loose words, our worship of different gods, or any other item that your particular temptations may be.  The good news is that pretty much any temptation that you as a person can be struggling with, there are some verses that are in the Bible to help you in your time of trouble.  

This is all a good reminder that the Lord’s law has been a gift given to us.  These are the words of God who, just like the best teachers and parents, wants to give us rules and regulations that will make us the most happy and filled with joy.  There are definitely times when this will be hard, and there will be many moments when we will want to be like everyone else in the world.  But we have the word that we can read on a regular basis as well as memorize for our assistance in becoming the best God-followers that we can be.