Episode Details

Psalm 119: The Long Love Letter

This is the longest chapter in the Bible — 176 verses, every one of them about the word of God — and the temptation is to find it tedious. We should resist. What looks like repetition is actually obsession, the way a lover circles back again and again to the beloved's name, finding new angles of light on the same face. "O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day." "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." "How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" The psalmist is not compiling a theology of Scripture; he is confessing an addiction to it. And woven through the ecstasy are the darker threads — affliction, persecution, proud men who forge lies, wicked hands that lay snares. This is not ivory-tower devotion. It is the testimony of someone who found that when everything else was stripped away — reputation, safety, comfort — the word of God was the one thing that could not be taken. "I have gone astray like a lost sheep," he admits at the very end. Even after 175 verses of devotion, he knows himself. Seek thy servant, he asks. For I do not forget thy commandments.

00:00 Blessed Are the Undefiled
01:00 Thy Word Have I Hid in My Heart
02:00 My Soul Cleaveth unto the Dust
03:00 Incline My Heart
04:00 I Will Speak Before Kings
05:00 I Made Haste to Keep Thy Commandments
06:00 It Is Good That I Was Afflicted
07:00 My Soul Fainteth for Thy Salvation
08:00 Forever Settled in Heaven
09:00 Sweeter Than Honey
10:00 My Hiding Place and Shield
11:00 Give Me Understanding
12:00 Rivers of Waters Run Down Mine Eyes
13:00 I Hoped in Thy Word
14:00 Great Peace Have They Which Love Thy Law
15:00 Seek Thy Servant