Month: December 2025

In December we sing Joy to the World to close our worship service, but every other Sunday we sing “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Those words are from Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the entire Bible. And it’s a chapter that focuses entirely on the Bible.

Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem of 22 stanzas, each beginning with a Hebrew letter in alphabetical order. Every stanza has 8 verses, and each line begins with the letter that introduces the stanza. Nearly every verse speaks of God’s words, laws, testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandments, judgments, or ordinances.

At first glance it may seem repetitious, but when meditated upon it opens up the mind to the wonders of God’s Word. And the more you contemplate it, the more you fall in love with the Word of God; the written Word and the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Matthew Henry fell in love with the Bible after his father encouraged him to take one verse of Psalm 119 every morning to meditate on, and thereby go through the psalm twice a year. His commentaries, written 300 years ago, are still used by preachers and Bible students today. William Wilberforce, who fought to abolish the slave trade, and David Livingston, the famous explorer and missionary in Africa, memorized the entire psalm.

I’m not going to suggest that you, or I, even try to memorize all 176 verses. But it might be good for us to end each day’s Bible reading with a verse from Psalm 119. And if you don’t have a plan for reading through the Bible in a year, I would suggest the Daily Reading Bible NASB. It can be purchased from Amazon for installation on Kindle. I’ve used it for six years, and plan on adding a verse to each day’s reading this year.

And if you want to contemplate Psalm 119 with others, I invite you to join our Wednesday Night Bible Study. We’re planning to dig into it, one stanza at a time, beginning January 7th at 6:30.

God Bless, Rick

We had hoped our new gym might be ready in time for Thanksgiving, but we decided no one would want to eat in a cold, dark, unfinished gymnasium. So we ate a delicious meal in a wonderfully crowded, and beautifully decorated, fellowship hall.

A big thank you all who had a hand in making for a great thanksgiving dinner. And as has been the case for a number of years, special thanks must go to Rhonda Bales. She and Dave, along with Lori and Gary, Dixie and Bob, Carole and Jack, and many others have always made sure we have plenty to eat, and a great time at our annual dinner.

This year another couple has literally stepped up to the plate. Elizabeth and Zach Wright have not only volunteered to join the team, they are going to take the lead in preparing our for big events so Rhonda can semi-retire. I do hope, however, that Elizabeth won’t get too busy to make more of those pretzel rolls.

Now, back to the gym. As Amos said, I’m not a prophet or the son of a prophet, so I’m not going to prognosticate as to the completion date of our new gym. We did set a target date of Thanksgiving just
to keep the ball rolling, but we’ve made some changes along the way that have slowed things down a bit.

The biggest change to our plans is to put a balcony on top of the storage areas. After realizing that balls would end up there on a regular basis, and a ladder would be needed to retrieve them, thought was given to a stairway. That led to thoughts of a balcony, and then the need for a railing, and a purpose for the balcony.

A balcony in a gym would, of course, be a great place for a set of bleachers from which to watch kids of all ages play basketball, volleyball and pickleball. And it would be a really neat place for teens
to just hang out, and for classes.

As I said, I’m not a prophet. There is still a lot of work to do and equipment to install, but I am hopeful that the next time we play volleyball together it will be in our new gym.

God Bless, Rick