1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

As this is my first meditation, I took the counsel of a good friend and decided to begin by looking at the second verse of the first Psalm. “[B]ut his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.” The first thing that entered my mind upon consideration of this verse was a sort of failure to relate. I haven’t any idea what it’s like to meditate on anything “day and night”. My attention is always divided and somewhat shallow, even when reading. The righteous man is said in this verse not only to meditate on the law day and night, but to “delight” in it.

That got me thinking: perhaps there’s a reason for the order of the verse – delight, then meditation. Delighting in a thing certainly enjoins meditation! But can it work the other way? By meditating on the law, is it possible to arrive at delight in the law? [I suppose I'm performing a sort of meditative excercise right now - perhaps my delight is imperceptibly growing in the process.] The reason I have to ask the question at this point is that I haven’t been experiencing a great deal of delight in the law of God in this season of my life.

According to Matthew Henry (whom I trust before Webster here), “To meditate in God’s word is to discourse with ourselves concerning the great things contained in it, with a close application of mind, a fixedness of thought, till we be suitably affected with those things and experience the savour and power of them in our hearts. This we must do day and night; we must have a constant habitual regard to the word of God as the rule of our actions and the spring of our comforts, and we must have it in our thoughts, accordingly, upon every occassion that occurs, whether night or day.” What’s more, such a delight (with discipline) is the root of the prospering tree in the adjoining verse, whose “leaf does not wither.” If nothing else (and there is certainly more), the text implies that I am to devote my most earnest thought and time to the word of God, day and night, if I ever expect the sapling that is my soul to fill out into such a tree.