It is not known at what stage of his life David wrote this psalm, but he had several life experiences that were difficult. His life seemed to be a series of highs and lows, ups and downs. His reaction during the difficult times was always to turn to The Lord.

Somehow the new year moves into February and we feel guilty that we have not kept our resolutions, so we give up and decide it is too hard for this year, because we have so many other commitments so we promise God that we will try again the next year!

Those same temptations are all around us today, in fact they are much closer than they were for David. We now have internet invading the lives of our children and grandchildren. Sadly many parents do not see the danger of some of the things that are available on our screens.

We can truly feel the heart of David in these words today. His single aim in life was to stay close to God and be as obedient as he could. That would be a challenge for many young people today, and for older people too!

Often when things go wrong, we have a tendency, most of us, to be angry with God or at least frustrated with Him. We believe that once we have given our lives to Jesus, we have the right to an easy life, with very little suffering. Not true!

It seems as though there was no way the psalmist would stray from the commands of God, he had seen too many answered prayers to ever do that. But when the criticism got to him and he was more than fed up with it, then He turned to The Lord.

Something in the verses today reminds me of the Ethiopian eunuch, who was reading the prophet Isaiah, in the days following Pentecost, and needed somebody to help him understand. The apostle Philip, miraculously, was in just the right place at the right time.

As we read these verses slowly we get the impression that David really did get excited about the scriptures. He was enthusiastic about what The Lord said about everything. His Bible was probably only the first 5 books of the Bible; The Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy).

While watching the sheep in the fields David had plenty of time to meditate on the messages he had heard at the synagogue. Did he actually accompany his family to the temple on the sabbath? Were the sheep taken into the barn for holy days, or just left to themselves?

There had been much shame in his family line when his maternal grandmother returned to Bethlehem having lost her husband and both her sons. The sons had broken Jewish tradition by taking Moabite wives, so as a foreigner, Ruth could have faced a lot of ridicule and rejection.