Beginnings: A Look at Psalm 1

Beginnings matter. They matter . . . period. As I approached my Introduction for The Search for Home, I had to make a decision where to begin. Should I begin writing about my birthplace? Should I begin as a teenager? Perhaps I should begin with my college years? Either way, all these beginnings were and are biographical. I chose to begin with my own Garden of Eden – Vandercook Park, during my childhood years. So just for fun, let me ask, if you were to write an autobiography, where would you begin?

The way God looks at us

As we approach the Psalms, after we pause and pray (see my previous post), it’s no accident that the first word is Blessed. That word tells us a whole lot about God’s disposition toward human beings.

Consider 1 Peter 1:3,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again . . . .  

Despite all the negative talk today about God, He is indeed for us. Yet at the same time, going back to Psalm 1, we want to be careful, because the emphasis in is upon God’s perspective on people’s activity. God is for us, but God is super excited about people who do the right thing.

In Hebrew the word for Blessed is what we call a particle interjection. That’s a fancy way of saying that the Psalm begins with something like “Hey, listen up! God is really excited about you! He’s excited about people who don’t do the following, but do something else:

• They know enough not to look for advice from wicked people.
• Their behavior is not characterized by people who don’t believe God is watching – known as sinners.
• They’re not filled with pride and sit around judging others – we call them scoffers.

What Do These People Do?

What specifically do these people do that God is really excited about? They are people who take pleasure in the law of God.

Psalm 1:2 but his delight is in the law (Torah) of the LORD, and on his law (Torah) he meditates day and night .

Now for the Psalmist the law of God is called the Torah, and that word can confuse us. The Torah can be the law of Moses. It could be the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible). It could even point to the entire Old Testament. All this being said, the best way to understand Torah in this context is the instruction of God – specifically, instruction on how to live. So we could say that the super blessed person is the one who lives and meditates on God’s way of living, and as Christians we know that such life is demonstrated by Jesus Christ.

Notice the contrast in the Psalm: we can live like the world (wickedness, sinning, scoffing), or we can live like God. Let me see . . . I think Jesus said something about that in Matthew 22:37-40:

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

So God loves you, but He gets super excited when you meditate on His way and live like Jesus. Are you ready? Are you ready to grow?