READ Psalm 119:145-152. 145 I call with all my heart; answer me, LORD, and I will obey your decrees. 146 I call out to you; save me and I will keep your statutes. 147 I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word. 148 My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promises. 149 Hear my voice in accordance with your love; preserve my life, LORD, according to your laws. 150 Those who devise wicked schemes are near, but they are far from your law. 151 Yet you are near, LORD, and all your commands are true. 152 Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever.
USING THE WORD. These verses give a glimpse of a day in the life of a man of the Word. He gets up before dawn to pray and hope in God’s Word (verse 147); late at night he meditates on its promises (verse 148). Verse 164 says that he praises God seven times a day for his word. Many monastic orders follow this literally and have seven set daily times for prayer and reading. But since the number seven signifies completeness or totality, we learn that we should make the prayerful study of the Word one of the top priorities for our time, something that is never squeezed out by other things.
Prayer: Lord, when I am done with this prayer I am going to make a plan and take action to read your Word more and more often. Help me, so that my plan will be neither too unrealistic to work nor too unambitious to make a difference. Amen.