Living in the Spirit
July 9, 2014 

Scripture Reading: Psalm 119:105-112 

Your word is a lamp to my feet
   and a light to my path. — 119:105 

Psalm 119:105 is one of those Bible verses I cannot read without singing it. It is probably one of the first, of what we called memory verses when I was a child, that I learned. Teaching styles have changed over the years but I don’t think using music as a means of teaching has.

My first memory of church was at the one room school house that set on the corner of my grandmother’s farm about three quarters of a mile from the farm where I lived. These buildings dotted the prairie every three miles throughout Oklahoma and much of the land that was opened for homestead settlement. The school had stopped being used as a school when my father was a boy but it was still used as a church each Sunday until it closed when I was in the first grade. A circuit riding minister preached one Sunday a month at our church as he did at three other churches nearby. On the months that had a fifth Sunday all four of these churches came together for a fifth Sunday sing.

The wife of the minister at that church was one of the nicest people I ever knew. She radiated love to all the children, probably the adults too. She is the one who taught me those songs and taught me using flannel board characters about Jesus. She nourished the seeds of God’s love that my parents had planted in my heart and probably, more importantly, planted and nourished the seeds of God’s love in some of my little friends whose parents had not yet introduced them to God. We are all called to do that.

Prayer:  Abba, Teacher, instill in each of us the call to plant and nourish seeds of your love in all the children of the world. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights reserved.