Bible Reading Blog
“Playing with LEGOs”
Categories: Congregational Bible ReadingBible Reading: Psalm 19
As a kid I loved playing with LEGOs. Every Christmas I would get a new LEGO set, and my dad and I would put it together. As I got older, he let me do them by myself. I remember one Christmas I received an especially large LEGO set that I was struggling to put together. The pieces weren’t fitting just right, and I was getting really frustrated.
In my 10-year-old mind, the best solution was to grab my box of spare LEGOs and add pieces to the set to make it work. This worked temporarily, but after a while I realized that was not going to make things better; in fact, it made things worse. Eventually, I accepted that what I really needed to do was stop and go back to the instructions to see where I had gotten off the pattern. I was never going to make the model properly without getting back to the pattern.
In our walk of faith, we know what our lives ought to look like because God has given us a pattern, by revealing to us his will through his word, and giving us the example of Jesus Christ. But because of our nature sometimes we get a little bit off of the pattern, and the principles in scripture don’t seem to fit just right. And so, we add our own think-sos or we take actions that are not proper, thinking we will get the result we desire. But what we do not recognize in these moments is that we cannot produce a righteous result from our own mind.
“Who can discern his errors?” (Psalm 19.12) David asks. The answer: not us! But God’s word can. Just prior to this David reminds us “the law of the Lord is perfect, sure, and right (Psalm 19.7-9). James says the word of God is like a mirror that shows us our faults and encourages us to make changes (James 1.25). Without God’s word as the only guide, not only will we fail to follow the pattern, we will fail to please God.
As you read your bible today, be honest about what you are using as the pattern for your thinking and listen carefully to how God’s word encourages you to change.
"Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer" (Psalm 19:13-14).
