“The law of the Lord is perfect….”

Today was, in fact a lovely day thus far. It is Thursday, so I had to leave at 7:30 rather than 8:30, but no problem, I’m an early riser anyway. I spent some time this morning over a cup of coffee and in the Word. First I read in Zephaniah. It is one of the shorter books of the old testament and I finished it in no time. Still feeling spiritually hungry, and physically hungry, I made myself some toast and sat down with Psalm 19. First, I read over it quickly to get the gist of the psalm and was delighted to read about joy and God’s glory. One part stuck out to me and that was verses 7-9:

“The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.

The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.”

I felt as though I needed to investigate this further instead of just skimming over as I do so many times. If you notice the phrases are put into two parts: the first a statement on the Lord, the second its effect on us. I wrote down definitions and worked on finding connections and did quite a few things to fully understand these verses. The result was a page full of words, arrows, scribbles, and what not, and as I stepped back to look, once again at the whole picture, I was filled with a desire to worship this Lord who’s commandments are pure, law is perfect, testimony is sure, fear is clean, and who is true and righteous altogether. I wondered at how I could ever resist rejoicing from my heart, having enlightened eyes, and being completely converted by Him. How marvelous is our Lord!

And, it was on that note that I left for school, earlier today than on Monday’s and Wednesday’s. We started class with a quiz which was a breeze. I must have been the only one who thought that because I was the first to turn it in and had to sit quietly for at least twenty minutes for the rest of the class to follow. During that twenty minutes I thought about those verses in psalms and wrote them down from memory in my notebook. I couldn’t help but send up prayers of worship as I let the verses from His word overwhelm my spirit and touch my heart. At one point I stopped and realized that a prayer was being answered just as I sat there. Earlier this week Philippians 4:8 was brought to my attention and I complained that it was too hard to always meditate on the pure, noble, just, lovely, etc. I found that in an effort to think of good things I would think of the things I should avoid thinking of and in doing so found myself thinking of just those things. It was just one of those trials that I had to give up to God, and plead for His help in the matter. Now, today, as I sat in class pondering the Psalms I was delighted to find that for twenty minutes I did nothing but meditate on godly things!

Anyway, for school we are learning gait training, so basically, how we would teach our patients how to use walkers, canes, crutches etc. We go through different scenarios and role play our way through them. It was a rather dull and laid back day and I can’t say much for it besides one small instance:

My partner and I were working on a scenario in which the patient (me) had surgery on their knee and could only put partial weight through that leg. The patient was to be going home that day and they needed to be fitted with crutches, taught how to use them on level surface and stairs with no railings. We went out into the stairwell as there is no room in the classroom. We were making our way down the stairs, my partner guarding me from the front and I, trying to be as realistic as possible limping down slowly, when the door to the stairwell opens and a man comes through. He had a terribly distressed look on his face and in a panicky tone asks if we need help. He must have felt very silly when I flung the crutches from beneath my arms and hopped on the stair and assured him we were only practicing. However silly the situation may have been I was touched to see that there are still compassionate people out there in the world. The remembrance of this event has been bringing smiles to my face all day.