Two Ways to Live

Psalm 1 is a favourite on many levels. Placed first in the Psalter, it acts like a flagship for the rest of the Psalms, offering decisive direction before embarking in this rest of the collection of Psalms.

Psalm 1 offers wisdom on the two options each person has on how to live life. The one option offers blessing, and places one on the path to a proper understanding of all the other Psalms. This option will allow you to make sense of the ups and downs of life as evidenced in the following 149 Psalms. The other option is disastrous. There is no lasting blessing, no understanding of the troubles and joys of life, and no clear direction. It is filled with evil and guilt and ends in destruction. These two options are so opposed to each other, that part of their individual descriptions include “not like the other option”. Which of these two ways will you chose to live?

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;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

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.

The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Psalm 1