This is my first post looking at a stanza of Psalm 119 which I’ve spoken about here and here.
The first staza of Psalm 119 is entitled ‘aleph’ - being the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet where each verse begins with this Hebrew letter1.
The first eight verses, from the NASB®2, interspersed with my comments read as follows:
1. How blessed are those whose way is blameless, Who walk in the law of the LORD.
uses law.
Being blessed can be read as being happy, though blessed sounds like it has more depth to it. It (to me) also connotes this blessing being granted or bestowed from another rather.
From verse 1 the Psalmist sets up the premise connecting blessedness with legal/moral innocence with the word of the Lord.
2. How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, Who seek Him with all their heart.
uses testimonies.
Ties obedience in with seeking the Lord. Relationship and obedience and inextricably linked.
3. They also do no unrighteousness; They walk in His ways.
uses ways.
Once again moral innocence and obedience are emphasised.
4. You have ordained Your precepts, That we should keep them diligently.
uses precepts.
Diligence - particularly around precepts to morality is not a popular concept today.
5. Oh that my ways may be established To keep Your statutes!
uses statutes.
The phrase ’that my ways may be established’ rather than ’ I will establish my ways’ suggests that some external assistance may be required!
6. Then I shall not be ashamed When I look upon all Your commandments.
uses commandments.
A continuation of thought from the previous verse. Makes meditation on a verse more difficult when ideas flow across verses.
7. I shall give thanks to You with uprightness of heart, When I learn Your righteous judgments.
uses judgments.
First introduction of the idea of thankfulness and gratitude.
8. I shall keep Your statutes; Do not forsake me utterly!
uses statutes.
A recognition of possible consequences and judgement. That’s where Jesus comes in - but we need belief/faith.
So in this first stanza we see seven of the nine or ten different descriptors of God’s word being used. They are essentially interchangeable but I suspect there will be subtleties and nuances that arise as we go.
This year (all nine days of it) I’ve been taking advice that pastor Philip Henry gave to his son Matthew some 300 years ago. Matthew was the author of the well-regarded commentary he called An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, but is more commonly known today as Matthew Henry’s Complete Bible Commentary. I wrote about this particular piece of advice mid last year. The advice is to meditate on a new verse from Psalm 119 each day. Loosely quoting his father, Matthew wrote:
Much of what we do, how we dress, where we go, what we eat and what we celebrate is built around or at least partly dependent upon seasons. A season is a period of time during which certain conditions exist or prevail which facilitate, encourage or discourage particular behaviours. Some seasons are designed to fit within a calendar year whilst other seasons can exist for much longer or shorter periods of time.
It’s three years to the day since my father died. Interestingly our society manages death by calling it something else. Years ago people ‘died’, more recently they are said to have ‘passed away’, but these days they just ‘passed’. Does denial make it easier? Perhaps in the short term; but giving it a different name may only prolong the grieving process.
Even though it is three years since the actual day of my father’s death, he really began declining ten years earlier and a few years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Over a period of 10 years the disease robbed him of some of his character and personality and presence. He spoke less, engaged less, slept more, shuffled around, fell over a few times and was eventually hospitalised and entered full time nursing care where he remained for three and a half years.
Around three months ago I made the switch from Firefox to Brave for my default browser. Brave seemed to offer more rigorous ad and tracker-blocking functionality, and it told me how many trackers it had blocked, how much hadn’t been downloaded, and how much time had been saved by not downloading ads and trackers.
One of the ‘features’ of brave is the ability to view ads and earn points (‘Brave rewards’) for the privilege. Other features are to ability to display sponsored ads and cryptocurrency tools on the new page tab. I have no interest in these features so turned off all options to display rewards, cryptocurrency ads and ‘sponsored images’. Interestingly it wasn’t obvious just how to switch all of these off.
A few weeks ago I came across a milk crate in our shed as I was tidying things up. Upon closer searching I actually found three milk crates that had been obtained (presumably by the previous owner) and secreted away. Milk crates are funny things. They are super-useful for storing and transporting things in; they often appear in yuppie or hip cafes as seats; they are often branded with their owners name, and it is illegal to hold on to them because they are owned by dairies.
It’s now been a little over two weeks since I installed LineageOS on my Samsung A5 phone.
During that time I’ve installed, removed, replaced and set defaults and permissions for the apps I use. I thought it may be useful for posterity to describe what apps I am using (and why).
First off, I didn’t install the so-called Gapps (Google Apps) package on my phone so I don’t have the Play store directly available. The benefit of that is that i don’t need to let Google know what apps I use, or when, or where, or how! But I do need to be able to install apps aside from the stock apps on my phone. I opted for F-Droid for that. I needed to access that site through my browser then download and install the F-Droid apk file.
After a couple of hours of spinning my wheels going nowhere this morning, my Samsung A5 2017 android phone is now free of all Google and Samsung apps.
After some consideration of both privacy concerns particularly relating to google described here and more general security concerns described here I looked into replacing the Google-provided operating system on my Samsung phone. One of the side benefits is to rid myself of all of the annoying and bloated Samsung apps that can’t be deleted by an everyday user.