Thy Word is a Lamp unto my Feet and a Light unto my Path (Psalm 119:105)

 

Picture a Grandpa and Grandma on a two-hour early Sunday morning road trip with 9-year-old twin grandsons—my bright idea for how we could all attend an out-of-town birthday party without missing Sunday worship. (Church always being Sunday’s top priority, I found a church in our association just twelve minutes from the party location.) We arrived with doughnuts to share with the congregation (because doughnuts are a surefire way to make friends, right?).

At this point I should explain that the twins attend a wonderful Bible-teaching church with traditions that differ from the wonderful Bible-teaching church where my husband and I are members. While we have liturgy and weekly communion in a one-room church house (people of all ages sitting together through one long service), they’re used to congregational singing followed by age-appropriate teaching in Sunday school rooms. So, with this one being more like our home church than theirs, it behooved us to prepare our active grandsons for a longer sit-quietly experience than they were used to. (And no, if you’re wondering, behooved isn’t one of my 2025 words, but isn’t it fun to give it a little screentime?)

Our church provides little ones with prompts for taking sermon notes, so, seeing the church we were visiting didn’t have an equivalent, I tore some pages from my notebook, grabbed a couple of extra pens and gave the boys an assignment.

“I want you to write down five to ten words you hear during the sermon and make tally marks every time you hear them repeated.”

 

Did they do it?

 

You betcha! I believe “Jesus” and “Love” made it onto both lists with several tally marks for each.

It strikes me the word-of-the-year practice is something like what I did to prepare my grandkids for that church service. It’s an experience where God metaphorically hands His children a piece of paper to help them navigate the coming year. My grandsons noticed particular words that repeated in the sermon, in the same way a word-of-the-year participant will see her word showing up in Bible reading, songs, conversations, movies, books, and even a Sunday sermon or two.

This year, the way one word lead to another and another for me reminds me of a fairy tale I loved as a child, The Princess Who Never Laughed (read here for a fairytale break). Instead of highlighting just one word for me to notice, study, and meditate upon, it feels like God did something more like what I did with my grandkids. Something more like the old grey man in the fairy tale did for Simpleton. He handed me a shovel and instructed me to dig for one golden word that would lead to others. One gift that would bring others along in a parade for my King’s pleasure.

When I introduced the idea for this 2025 series to my email subscribers in January, I included two verses.

 

“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.”

 

This is the first verse of many I included on two printed pages I’ve been using for daily meditation. I’ve walked through the verses and prayers on those pages most mornings and again at bedtime, my words-of-the-year marked like stepping stones. PLANS…PURPOSE…STAND…

As I ponder and meditate, I often recall other verses with additional words that connect and repeat. I’ve circled, underlined, color-coded and written in between paragraphs and along page borders. Not even three months into the year, my pages are soft and wrinkled and worn, and still these stepping stones lead me along with added nuance and weight.

The other verse I wrote in that January email, starts the section of my meditation pages where LIGHT, WALK, DARKNESS, WORD and SHONE/SHINES take center stage.

After much prayer, I’m sharing that section with you today. Not simply as it’s written on the pages, but in the way it might flow as I meditate upon it. Because I’m lead to emphasize different words and phrases on different days, grouping and ordering lines differently from the way they originally appeared. Sometimes I meditate on just one verse or even part of a verse, other times I read through from beginning to end. One time, after several weeks of using these pages as a guide, I noticed a word I hadn’t paid much attention to in previous readings.

 

DWELT appeared not in one verse but two, and drew me to focus on the connection.

 

Since this developed over several weeks of prayer and memory and word search, I don’t know if you will see, with just one reading, all that I see.  I imagine, if my grandsons listened to that same sermon day after day, new words would have made their way onto Lyle and Matthew’s lists. There would be more tally marks on the original words as they heard them in places they hadn’t noticed the first time. And that’s what’s happened to me with the Scriptures and prayers I wrote down for myself at the beginning of this year.

But, even though you might not get as much out of it as I do, I’d like to share this portion of my word walk with you, one word leading to another, new words connecting and showing up in one verse after another, adding in, circling back, lines repeating like a chorus. (To help in this endeavor, I’ve included the book from which each Scripture is taken and put repeating words into ALL CAPS, bolding each one the first time it appears).

So, these words from my meditation pages may not, on first reading, make any more sense to you than that sermon in its entirety would have made to my nine-year-old grandsons (who are, I should say—in case they read this—now ten). But I hope I’ve given you enough direction to dig in and find a golden word or two. Just enough to get you started on your own word parade.

 

A  Meditation on Walk, Light, Word, Path, Darkness (and a few more)

 

We WALK as children of LIGHT (for the fruit of LIGHT is found in all that is GOOD and right and true) seeking to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. (Ephesians)

Your WORD is a lamp to my feet and a LIGHT to my PATH. (Psalms)

IN THE BEGINNING was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God. He was IN THE BEGINNING with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the LIGHT of men. (Gospel of John)

The people who WALKed in DARKNESS have seen a great LIGHT; Those who DWELT in a land of deep DARKNESS, on them has LIGHT SHONE. The LIGHT SHINES in the DARKNESS, and the DARKNESS has not overcome it. (Isaiah)

And the WORD became flesh and DWELT among us. (Gospel of John)

Again Jesus spoke to them saying, “I am the LIGHT of the world. Whoever follows Me will not WALK in DARKNESS, but will have the LIGHT of LIFE. (Gospel of John)

Your WORD is a lamp to my feet and a LIGHT to my PATH.

He leads me in PATHs of righteousness for His Name’s sake. (Psalms)

WALK as children of LIGHT (for the fruit of LIGHT can be found in all that is GOOD and right and true).

I will give you as a covenant for the people, a LIGHT for the nations. To open the eyes that are blind, to lead out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in DARKNESS. And I will lead the blind in a way they do not know. In PATHs that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn this DARKNESS before them into LIGHT. (Isaiah)

Your WORD is a lamp to my feet and a LIGHT to my PATH.

IN THE BEGINNING, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and DARKNESS was over the face of the earth. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be LIGHT, and there was LIGHT. And God saw that the LIGHT was GOOD. And God separated the LIGHT from the DARKNESS. God called the LIGHT Day and the DARKNESS He called Night. (Genesis)

And the city has no need of sun or moon to SHINE on it, for the glory of God gives it LIGHT, and its LAMP is the Lamb. By its LIGHT will the nations WALK. (Revelations)

Your WORD is a lamp to my feet and a LIGHT to my PATH.

And night will be no more. They will need no LIGHT of LAMP or sun, for the Lord God will be their LIGHT.  (Revelations)

IN THE BEGINNING was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the WORD was God. He was IN THE BEGINNING with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the LIGHT of men. (Gospel of John)

We WALK as children of LIGHT, seeking to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Your WORD is a LAMP to our FEET and a LIGHT to our PATH. (Ephesians, Isaiah)

*Scriptures here taken from: Ephesians 5:8-10, Psalm 119:105, John 1:1-5&14, Isaiah 9:2, John 8:12, Psalm 23, Isaiah 42:6,7,16, Genesis 1:1-5, Revelations 21:23, 24, Revelations 22:25. Please note, this is a meditation and not a study. Please look up scripture passages for full meaning in context.

 

Perhaps it’s obvious I’m no expert on meditation, but meditation was once described to me as a holy kind of worrying (sadly, something I am an expert on). So, instead of focusing, pondering and ruminating on every fearful thought that enters my mind, I’m practicing this way of replacing worries with the word of God. Turning these verses over in my mind, looking at them from different angles, letting them sink in and repeat and point to additional verses to become a cadence arising in unexpected moments. Helping me walk more consistently, hopefully, and joyfully as a child of light.

P.S. If we were having this conversation in front of my fireplace right now, this is the time I would pull out my marked up pages. You might then nod politely and say, “Well, it’s been a nice visit, but the weather looks threatening (which is true), so I’d better go.” But if you think you’d be more likely to want a closer look at those pages as a visual aid to what I’m here describing, I’d be happy to email you a scanned copy.

And no judgments please. This isn’t something I’ve prettily prepared for my blog friends or my email friends. It’s just something tucked into my journal that I’m willing to share with my fireplace friends. So, if that’s you, write me at jody@jodyevans.com and ask.