Remember When

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Remember when it used to be easy to remember? As for me, I have forgotten. To offset this rapidly accelerating memory loss due to the onset of “middle age,” I’ve decided to input more information, which may seem totally illogical to some of you, but at this point, I’m willing to try just about anything. That being said, I’m attempting to memorize one psalm per week. After spending three days with Psalm 1 running through my mind during my waking hours, it’s beginning to sink in and stay. I do know that the message will stay with me long after I forget the exact cadence of the words or their exact order. As I’ve walked down the hall at work this week, I’ve heard the echo of verse 1:
How blessed is the man who does not
walk in the counsel of the wicked,
            Nor stand in the path of sinners,
            Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! (NASB).
And it has helped my feet go in better directions—I’m trying not to loiter in negativity or in areas where gossip occurs, and I’m certainly trying to avoid “scoffing” at others because I certainly don’t like being “scoffed” at. For me, the key verse of the entire psalm is verse two, which is the key to my actions because they flow out of what is in my heart:
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
            And in His law he meditates day and night. 
We’ve all heard that input equals output. It’s simplistic, but true. If I input righteousness into my mind with Christ at the center of my heart, righteousness should pour out of my life.
The psalm ends with these words in verse six:
                        For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
                        But the way of the wicked will perish.
More important than what I know or remember is that God knows and remembers me. Romans 6:12-13 encourages us to not let sin rule us and tells us that we are not to offer up ourselves as “instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present [ourselves] to God as being alive from the dead, and [our] members as instruments of righteousness to God.” The best part of all is that if we are in Christ, sin no longer controls us, Christ does. So…now I’m trying to remember why I’ve not been putting in a lot of new verses lately, but I can’t come up with any good reasons!

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