We are excited to be starting a new series of reflections on the Psalms. Each day we will upload a new reflection to the website. We hope and pray that you will find them helpful and that they bring hope during this season. Click on these buttons to read the text of the psalm or listen to a recording of it. You can also listen to the reflection using the audio player below.
Read Psalm 1 Listen to Psalm 1
Podcast (cnc-daily-psalms): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05 — 1.3MB)
We’re living through a time of national and of global crisis. It’s also a time of personal crisis. It’s a time when so much of our normal life has been stripped away. The COVID-19 pandemic has left us exhausted of superlatives to describe what is going on. We’re learning new phrases like social distancing and self-isolation. When we don’t have the usual structures of life, meeting together, going to work or school, or socialising, where do we go to be nourished?
The psalmist encourages us to meditate on the law of the Lord, that is the Bible, day and night. Then we will be like a tree planted by streams of water. Water gives life, enabling trees to flourish and to bear fruit. During times of drought a tree with deep roots will continue to be nourished. It will find water to give it life.
To be like that unshakeable big tree the psalmist says we must send down our roots into God’s Word. If we do this then we will be fruitful, we will have life and we will prosper. A tree bears fruit not for itself but for others. So when the faithful prosper it is in order to bring benefit to others. This psalm comes with a promise that we will be blessed, that is happy, because the Lord will watch over us.
Lord, thank you for your streams of water to make me fruitful, to give me life and to prosper me. May I make a regular habit of meditating on your Word.