Psalm 1

I find Psalm 1 interesting.

It first starts out with a short list of bad sources of influence. I have had them in my life. The friends that got me into shop lifting in 7th grade... "5 finger discount is what we called it to be cool". The friend whose father had Girly magazines... I had to relearn how to have healthy boundries and healthy attatchments... Marriage for 12 Years has been for me better than all the chasing ever was... I Learned to distance myself from those who made it their full time job to put people down... If they are good at put downs... and you hang around... in time your turn will come...

Then It talks about the source of the "blessed / Good" life.

To be like a tree by streams of water... to be full on the inside... Nourished and fruitful... to be really allive...

Delight in God's word... and in the law.

Good Rules, best understood, are sign posts of care, caution, and protection. I was the kind of kid that tested boundries.

As a kid.. I Drank motor oil because I wanted to become a car... Got my stomach pumped.
I was of the mindset at first... If I was told the stove was hot I had to touch it... Got burned a lot with that mindset...

Obeying a rule because it is there has little joy in it.
Appreciating the good intent when my friend told me while working in a Chemistry lab... Glass can get quite hot and not show any signs of being hot... It saved me from getting badly burned...

A friend of mine named, Vishal Mangalwadi, wrote a book called, "Truth and Social Reform". He says that any society that consistently breaks the 10 commandments will be poorer than a society that follows these "laws of God".

Knowing what choices are going to turn out bad in the long run isn't a rip off or a bad thing. It gives a person a lot of room to explore all the other possibilities of life. There are a lot of ways to prosper...

It starts with a mindset that respects that there is a source of insight other than experience that can guide us towards... The Real Good...

Jesus said that the Law and the prophets could be summed up in this... Love of God, Love of oneself, and Love of neighbor... I wonder why we are afraid of The law???

I think it is because some mockers who were good at putting others down got ahold of the law of God and started using it to put others down... rather than explaining how one's quality of life is going to be impacted... and really helping people to connect with the good that is in life...

People end up dry, disconnected, and then blown away... when life gets hard... if they do not have roots in their soul that connects them with real resources greater than themselves... We need the inner resources that Psalm 1 is talking about...

Now that's why I go to the Bible...to connect with the God of the Bible... Not just the book... I grow in my capacity to connect with the source of love itself... I find in it real resources that inspire me to live, love, listen, and discover again and again... the streams of water is fresh... if I come to it to draw life from it.

Reading is not what Psalm 1 recommends... we get this from a lot of church folk... "Read your Bible"... Meditation goes deeper. It's what you think about after you are done reading. It's that inner space of thoughts, ideas, questions, and wonder... It's where we get those insights of discovery from; the AHA's of life that make us go WoW and want to dig deeper. It is in this space that God sneaks up on me quietly and shows me stuff about life and reveals entrances into fellowship with God.

I Go to the stream... the water is fresh... if I pay attention beyond the inK on the page... and let it illuminate life for me... Revelations are not in the ink on the page but rather it is what the light of the Word causes us to see connect with in life. (I Timothy 4:16, Hebrews 4:12&13)