Even though princes sit plotting against me, your
servant will meditate on your statutes. Psalms 119:23
I'm guessing that
you've notice the word 'plotting' in the first part of this statement. Someone
is out to get our psalmist. What drives this home is the identity of his
antagonists: princes. In the previous verse our writer referred to those who
scorned him and held him in contempt. That's bad enough. But here we have
people who have some power to make life really
difficult. The psalmist is being threatened and the consequences of such
threats are quite serious.
And yet, our friend
doesn't give himself to worry and how to defend himself and all of that. The
danger notwithstanding, he continues to invest the time and effort needed to
think about what God has said about life and how to live it well. And that,
actually, is why he doesn't give in to worry and the like. He understands
something of God's ideas about life.
There are many
things that Satan will use to distract us from what is really important, things
like pondering the implications of the Word. Some of them are threats, like
what the psalmist faced, while other distractions are good things which are
offered as substitutes for what is better. The wise Christian understands his
enemy. And he knows that the key to living well is knowing God's thoughts about
the nature of reality, life in this creation. That is the priority of his life.