Short Devotion - from tee shern ren's blog

1:1 Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

At the end of the day, we are all meditators, we are all delighted and captivated by life and by certain things in life. For the Hebrew word for meditate was literally to "chew", to ruminate - the same way that, when you have a good piece of well-cooked chicken, you gnaw it down to the bone, and then lick your fingers for good measure. To meditate simply means to allow your mind to be drawn to thinking about something all the time. You don't even need to consciously think about applying it; after a while, whatever we meditate on will automatically begin to apply itself.

When we allow ourselves to be delighted and captivated by the wicked and their flashy ways - when we let ourselves be drawn to the sex and the booze, the money and the power - we slowly become like them. We learn to do things their way (all the time convincing ourselves, perhaps, that each new sin is "harmless", that we are not really like them no matter how much we act like them); we become comfortable standing around them, at the dinner parties and the bar nights and the corporate photo sessions; and at the end of the day their chairs are so comfortable that we sit down with them and become indistinguishable from them. We will identify so well with them that the day will come when, as the righteous gather, we will stare at those we once mingled with in suspicion and ignorance without even remembering that we once considered ourselves among their ranks.

But - the Law, the Law! Not just the Law of Moses but the Law of God - the good and perfect standards for living that God, our Maker, has graciously revealed to us through the Bible. If we draw ourselves into the world of the Bible (instead of the world of this world), if we lose ourselves among the stories of David and Moses and Daniel the same way that modern people lose themselves in the stories of shallow celebrities, we will not be able to stop thinking about the Bible even if we wanted to. Slowly the Bible will start to come to mind, more and more immediately, the minute we are tempted to go the world's way instead of God's way. God's commands will become meaningful, not archaic; God's holiness will become vital, not prudish. Whatever we stare into day and night has the power to change us into its image; and the word of God will transform us, day by day, into the likeness of the children of God.