Today's Reading August 22

A bit before dawn here.
Psalm 119, verses 49 through 104
The Psalm of praise and the excellence of the Lord's word continues.

63 I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts.
64 The earth, O LORD, is full of thy mercy: teach me thy statutes.
65 Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O LORD, according unto thy word.
66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments.

There are those who think of the Bible, in particular the Old Testament (Christians are, unfortunately, quite prone to this) as a bunch of dry rules that, if followed, were intended to get you into Heaven. I don't see it that way, as if somehow you were checking off the do's and dont's for the day, trying to earn a merit badge or the like. No, I think of it as developing into the kind of person that the Lord intended, rather like developing the character of being a good student by regularly studying hard, becoming G-d's person by doing the things that He said to do. We can argue the effectiveness of that - clearly it has and had its failures. But it's not a worthless exercise either.

Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

And there is something to be said for developing the disciplines and the habits of a believer.
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This evening's New Testament passage is 1st Corinthians chapter 4
Again, this is a letter to a group of believers, not an exposition of the Gospel to the unsaved, and therefore deals with the issues of a church
There is a lot here, I am drawn to part of it:

16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.
17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church.

Recall that the Bible, or rather the New Testament as we know it, did not yet exist. So for guidance and direction, what did these early churches have? The Holy Spirit, of course, and thanks be to God. But of teaching and written doctrine there was but little. So what Paul - and the other disciples, evangelists, and teachers - were doing was to say ''Look at me! See how I lived. See how I taught. See how I dealt with questions, and with disagreements, and with persecution and opposition. Follow me, as I follow Christ.'' They didn't have the Book. But they did have the followers, of Christ, and were urged to follow that model.
I worry about that. I'm not sure that I would want others to model their lives, their speech, their approach, to how I do things, knowing all too well my own sins and failures. 'Course, the closer I walk with Christ, the more visible my own sins and faults are, to me at least. But, and Paul is right, others should be able to follow us. Others, particularly those outside the church, ought to be able to discover the character of Jesus by watching ours. They may read me, before they want to read the Book. And that is something that sobers me considerably.