May 24

Psalm 119
It is indeed the longest psalm in the Bible. It is also an acrostic which is a poem using the alphabet or a word as the first letter of each line or stanza. This one is a Hebrew alphabet acrostic.
Here is the link to Wikipedia regarding it. Click HERE. I found it fascinating even with no theology mentioned. And then that led me to what are the other acrostics that Wikipedia mentions and here are links to those.

In today and yesterday’s scripture, it mentions repeatedly ‘the teachings of your precepts’. Where do we get those from? Sunday School? Parents? Society?
I was brought up in a church family. We had devotions every night until I was in my late teens. I KNEW the Bible when I went to Sunday School (much to my teachers’ distress with all my arrogance). But it wasn’t until I was an adult, in an intense Bible study called Kerygma, that I really started to LEARN the Bible. Knowing the stories is one thing. Knowing the meaning, the shapes, the textures, the reasons why is a total different one.
Here is an example. I KNEW the Noah story from earliest childhood. I even knew – in 5th grade, no less – that there were 2 Noah stories in Genesis.
Reading the Bible as an adult, I began to feel for the babies and children, the dogs and cats, all those left behind. And then I had to come at the story from another angle. Suddenly, I wasn’t blameless Noah in the story, I was awful, sinful me. It had a whole different meaning, texture. And that led me to read the Babylonian scriptures which also contain a flood story, a Thai creation story that begins with a flood and an ‘ark’ of Turtle, and many other realms.
So, back to our psalm for today. Are your ‘teachings of precepts’ the same as when YOU were 12? Where do you get your knowledge from and how are you stretching yourself these days? Maybe that is an unfair question since my stretches these days are coming from reading this Bible in a Year. But I do think it has to be an ongoing thing and it had better be one of your main priorities in your life if you want to live out the scripture we read yesterday “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the Law of the Lord.”

NT -- John 13:31-14:14
Here is a hint. This scripture begins one of the 7 common stories in all 4 gospels……