The loudest voice

Its very rare that we enjoy quiet. We live a world of noise, where background music is the norm, where silence is a rarity.

Amidst all that noise there are lots of voices competing for our time, attention, love, desire and money. Advertising is only the most obvious form of this, but there is also the subtle pressure exerted by TV programmes, films, newspapers to live up to their ideals and share their values. It is then refreshing and challenging to come to Psalm 1

Which exclaims 'O blessedness of him who...' does not live as those opposed to God but who treasures and lives by God's word. In thinking about the central truth of this introductory Psalm it is striking how real and hard the battle is to treasure God's word, to meditate on it day and night as the Psalm calls us to.

And yet we live in an age when we probably have more tools available to us to help us with the Bible than preceding generations. So why do we find it so hard? I think one of the problems is that we fear what society will think of us if they see how highly we view scripture, how it sets the tone of our living, how it excites and captivates us. The result of that fear is that we don't allow it to do those things, but Psalm 1 calls us to recognise the danger in that and repent. To make the Bible our delight and central to our living, thinking and decision making.

Part of doing that is spending time reading it then taking time to work out what it means and finally viewing life in the light of it and changing what needs to be changed in the light of grace.