Light to My Path.
Lamp and feet. Light and path. Two metaphors meant to make us dream of journeys made by night. The pilgrim treks ahead with limited vision, taking each step beneath a blanket of light-less sky. Lamp-lit traveling might conjure up memories of camping by the lake, flashlight in hand, stars overhead. But for the psalmist and his readers, this imagery once carried more weight than a rose-colored recollection of summer pastimes.
In a world where on-demand light is mere commodity, we can miss the psalmist’s need for his lamp’s flickering glow. While our homes remain bright long after the sun sleeps, the psalmist couldn’t imagine paths illumined by bulb and wire. His world, short on tools for subduing shadows, stayed covered in darkness when the moon took her place among the stars. Enveloped in this dim, lightless world, he’s thankful for the circumference of sight created by a small torch. We take for granted what the psalmist never could—an ability to still see when the sun has long set.
The psalmist’s appreciation for a well-lit lamp intensifies his metaphor’s urgency. Light for the journey keeps our pilgrim alive; darkness is dangerous on an evening expedition. Thieves and beasts may be hiding behind every curtain of shadow. And like a trail traveled by night, the path of the psalmist’s life also proves perilous without the glow of God’s Word. Moment by moment the psalmist must let Scripture shine on his decisions and actions, relationships and interactions. Reliance on revelation isn’t a choice; it’s a necessity—the consequences deadly, like walking at night without the weapon of light.
What lamp illumines your steps? How do you navigate life’s poorly lit path? While neighbors who lack light stumble in darkness, the psalmist invites us to journey with sight. By attentively seeing God’s Word we rightly see God’s world, navigating reality through eyes fixed by faith. Without Scripture’s illuminating presence we bumble about like sleep walking fools, staggering and stumbling with no sense of direction. But when God-breathed words blow across our paths, clearing away folly and ignorance, our eyes open to a world where Jesus walks among us, the imprints of his footsteps mapping our every move.
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