1 Advent, Wednesday

With my lips will I recite *
     all the judgments of your mouth.

One of the main benefits of "praying the Scriptures" the way that we do in the Daily Office is that the repetition of the antiphons and psalms and lessons and canticles and the Apostles' Creed and the collects gives us, over time, ready access to the language of God.

"The word is very near to you," we read in Deuteronomy. "It is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe" (Deut. 30:14).

"How shall a young man cleanse his way?" the Psalmist asks in today's appointed portion. "By keeping to your words" (Psalm 119:9).

The Daily Office represents a time-tested way to "keep to God's words" by using them in prayer morning and evening, day after day, week after week, season after season. The offices themselves are essentially verses of Scripture arranged around a two-year cycle of readings from the Psalms and from the Bible -- the Psalms repeated every seven weeks, the bulk of the Old Testament read once every two years, and the New Testament twice.

One of the struggles people have when they desire to read more of the Bible is that they need to have some kind of plan -- just plunging in at Genesis often means people bog down in the "begats" when they hit the book of Numbers. The Daily Office lectionary offers one kind of plan, a scheme by which we use the Scriptures in prayer as a way of familiarizing ourselves with the language of God. It's not a study plan, but a prayer plan.

In fact, that's what our whole Book of Common Prayer is -- the prayer plan for leading a Christian life -- but that's a bigger subject for a different time.

For today, ask yourself if you would benefit from having some kind of plan to make sure the "word is very near you ... in your mouth and in your heart to observe it." And let me know if I can help you get started.