Today, I am reading and commenting on  Psalms 136-142.

I have an idea of what I want to write about today’s psalms which comes together as a cohesive whole.  Let’s see if it works out that way when I type it out.

We ought to give thanks to God for His goodness and love.  When we look at the world and what happens in it, time and again we see the great wonders which God has done, and the endurance of His love for those who fear Him.  I will praise God before the powers and authorities which set themselves up in His place, letting them know that they fall short of His greatness.  I read Psalm 139 and I think of the surveillance apparatus of the government, and of the ways in which “Big Tech” tracks our actions, behavior, and movement, but compared to God, they know nothing about us.

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.

Those I mentioned think that they can search me and know my heart, that they can know if there is any offensive way in me, as they define offensive.  They even think they can guide me to the right way to think.  But they are mistaken, because they did not form me in my mother’s womb.  They did not shape my innermost being.  In fact, unlike God, they cannot truly see my innermost being.  Each one of us is fearfully and wonderfully made by God, and only He can see into the depths of our hearts.  Those others misuse God’s name and attempt to appropriate for themselves that which only God can command.  When I first read the psalmist’s plea to the Lord to keep him safe from the wicked my thought was to rephrase that thought to keep from being wicked or violent because those things could trip my feet and bring me down.  However, as I wrote what I wrote above it occurred to me the ways in which those who think they are ‘gods’ attempt to trip us up, to separate us from God.  Which caused me to echo the psalmist’s plea.  I, too, beg God to protect me from them, to protect me from the ways in which they seek to manipulate me into worshiping them in place of God.  Finally, I ask God, as the psalmist does, to guard my mouth so that I say only those things which bring glory to Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.