Growing into Psalm 119

 Growing up I remember individual verses being extracted from Psalm 119 in a sort of moralistic way to teach us how important obeying the Bible was. When I was introduced to using the Psalms as a prayer guide by Bonhoeffer's book "Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible," I remember his encouragement not to rush through 119 because it was long and seemingly redundant. In my monthly prayer Psalm rotation, I use 119 in the months with 31 days (like today). Having done that for over 50 years now, I don't know that I am quite where Bonhoeffer got to, but I have come to appreciate 119 as a total package. Over those years I have come to recognize the various descriptions of God's Word/Law as an expansive expression of the character of God. As Verse 96 says, "I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad." With that awareness has come a kind of reversal from the moralism I grew up with to see that God's steadfast love motivates and empowers me to live more and more into the character of God, not just following rules. As verse 17 says, "Deal bountifully with your servant, so that I may live and observe your word."