"there has only ever been one perfect man, the Lord Jesus, and we killed him. I only missed a putt."
Where is your hope?
Psalm 119:74 I have put my hope in your word. 83 I do not forget your decrees. 87 I have not forsaken your precepts. 89 Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.Psalm 119 is best known for being the longest of the Psalms – 176 verses. While the length may be off-putting if you want to read a Psalm, it is full of gems. The reason for the length, incidentally, is that it has 22 stanzas each beginning with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
I write this at a time when Covid deaths in the UK have reached 100,000. The economy has been badly affected and the sporting calendar decimated. Where is your hope in times like this?
The Psalmist is in no doubt. His trust is in God and his word.
Remember how the Psalm begins: “You bless everyone who lives right and obeys your law”. Ps 119:1 It is easy for us to misunderstand what the Psalmist is saying. A requirement that we obey God's law in order to obtain God's blessing sounds quite different from the salvation by grace that we experience as Christians. Before we can apply the Psalm to the world of sport, we need to understand it.
As Bishop Graham Cray reminds us, "God is not a Lord who watches us like a hawk, to see if we step out of line. He longs for us to enjoy freedom and blessing." If we see God's law as principles for living more than rules to be obeyed, we are on the right track.
As we look around the world, in almost any country, we see leaders who have not lived up to their promises. In these days when we long for the pandemic to pass and normality to return, let us continue to trust in God’s word and promises.