Psalm 119 Aleph (1-8)

Welcome to Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the Bible. Because of its length, and the variety of its subject matter, we are going to take this psalm in chunks. Something that's kinda neat with this psalm is that every section is marked by a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The reason it's marked with a letter is because every line in that section begins with that letter. For that reason, Psalm 119 is one of the literary masterpieces of the Bible. Anyway, on to the content of section Aleph...

Here is a common cycle that people can fall into. We recognize that God is holy and acts holy all the time. God's character is consistent from Genesis to Revelation. When we gaze too long at the mirror of God's integrity, we see a poor reflection of our own integrity. When we see fulfilled promises of God, we see broken promises on our end, and so on. However, the Holy Spirit within us gives us a gift. Whereas we might sink into shame and never change from our habits, the Spirit gives us grace and life and the capacity to change. Therefore, like the psalmist, we too can commit ourselves to new obedience. May today be a day of new obedience for us all.