Psalm 119:138

Psalm 119:138

Righteous and trustworthy

It’s a long while ago now, but some of us grew up in a world where God’s Name was honoured, where church was not an irrelevance and where most people had a faith, even if it was misguided or confined to high days and holidays. Children went to Sunday School on Sunday afternoons, every School Day began with a Christian Assembly, churches were well attended at Easter and Harvest as well as Christmas. Sundays were a day of rest and no businesses opened, and sport was played on Saturdays. In my childhood and teens, on summer afternoons on Sundays, we held evangelistic meetings in the open air on village greens and in town centres, and every village had its own vicar or rector and its own non-conformist chapel. How things have changed and with those changes has come a degrading of moral standards and a rejection of God’s statutes by the majority of the population. God is an irrelevance to all but a few and His moral laws are ignored. As a consequence, children and adults suffer with mental health issues, and people have no understanding of why they are privileged to be alive and granted a short period in which to enjoy the beauty and provision of this planet. Most moral guidelines have been jettisoned and now we all have to listen to psychologists, philosophers, counsellors and proponents of mindfulness and well-being, to understand what makes us tick and how to make the most of this life. 

The verse before us today underlines the radical nature of faith and the alternatives that it offers. We reject the so-called wisdom of the so-called wise men and women of this day and age. We study and meditate upon the statutes and laws of the Lord God. He alone is our mentor and our reason for living. His ways are righteous, He is utterly trustworthy and every word He has ever pronounced is true. If only we could persuade everyone to believe in Him, what a different world it would be! And that is exactly our commission – to go and tell them. 

 

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