The Rule

The whole book of Psalms opens with a portrait of the blessed man, and it is worth seeing what marks him, for it is not what we might expect. He is not marked first by great deeds, or by high office, or by any dramatic achievement. He is marked by a settled habit of the inner life. His delight is in the law of the LORD, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. The blessed life, the psalm tells us, is built quietly on this, a delight in the word of God and a steady, continual dwelling in it, day and night, as the fixed orientation of the whole man.

Two words carry the weight of it, delight and meditate. His delight is in the law, not his grudging duty toward it, and this is the first thing to note, that the blessed man does not merely submit to the word but loves it. And he meditates in it day and night, not now and then, not in occasional fits of zeal, but continually. The word for meditate means to murmur, to mutter, to chew over, the way a beast chews the cud, bringing the same food up again and again to draw the last nourishment from it. The blessed man does this with the word, turning it over in the mind through the day and into the night, ruminating, tasting, never quite done with it.

DELIGHT, NOT DRUDGERY

Now this raises a question that presses on every soul that would build such a life, for how shall the law be a delight? To the natural heart the commandments of God are a burden, a set of restrictions to be endured, and the very idea of delighting in them seems strange. But hear the psalmist of the longest psalm, who cries, O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. What made the difference between the man who finds the law a burden and the man who finds it his delight? It is love. Where the heart loves God, his word becomes sweet, and meditation on it a joy and not a task, and the whole rule of life that is built on it a delight rather than a drudgery.

And here we must set a guard, for there is a way of keeping a rule that kills the delight, and it is the way of legalism, of making the rule an end in itself, a cage of duties to be performed for their own sake. A rule kept from love is delight; a rule kept from mere duty, or from the wish to earn God’s favor, becomes a drudgery and at last a bondage. The rule is not the life. It is the trellis on which the life grows. It is meant to serve the love, not the love to serve the rule, and the moment we forget this the whole thing hardens into the very legalism the gospel came to break.

THE ROOTED TREE

See what such a settled life produces, for the psalm goes straight on to the fruit. The man who delights in the law and meditates in it day and night shall be, it says, like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither. There is the harvest of the rule, a life rooted and watered and fruitful, steady through the seasons, not withering in the heat. And mark the order, for the fruit comes from the rootedness, and the rootedness from the steady dwelling in the word. The tree does not strain to produce fruit. It sinks its roots to the water and stands, and the fruit comes in its season, as the natural overflow of a rooted life.

This is why the ordinary, unglamorous discipline of a rule matters so much, though it looks like nothing while it is being kept. The roots grow in the dark and the silence, unseen, day after unremarkable day, and it is those hidden roots, and not any sudden effort, that hold the tree through the drought and bring the fruit in its season. The soul that dwells daily in the word is sinking roots it cannot see toward a water it cannot see, and it will stand green and bearing when the shallow-rooted wither, not because it tried harder in the crisis, but because it was rooted before the crisis came.

DAY AND NIGHT

The blessed man meditates day and night, and this speaks of rhythm, of a rule that gives shape to time. The life with God is not sustained by spasms of zeal, the sudden burst of devotion that flares and dies, but by steady returning practice, the appointed hour kept whether or not the feeling is present, the word taken up morning and evening as the fixed frame of the day. This is what a rule of life is, an ordering of our hours so that the word and prayer are not left to the mercy of mood but given their settled place. The steps of a good man, the psalm says, are ordered by the LORD, and a wise rule is simply the ordering of the daily steps so that they carry us, faithfully, toward God.

God gave this counsel to Joshua at the threshold of his great work. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, he said, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein. Day and night, the same phrase, the same steady, continual dwelling in the word, given to a soldier about to lead a nation into war. The rule is not for monks only, nor for quiet seasons only. It is the settled foundation on which even the most active life must be built, the roots that hold the tree when the storm of great labor comes.

THE WORD DWELLING RICHLY

The aim of the whole rule is not the number of chapters covered but the word come to dwell within us. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, the apostle says, and the word he uses is the word for taking up residence, for making a home. The meditation of the blessed man, day and night, is not the hurried reading that passes the eye over many pages and leaves nothing behind, but the slow dwelling that lets the word settle in and make its home, until it is no longer a visitor to the mind but a resident of the heart. A soul may read a great deal and have the word dwell in it hardly at all, and another may read little and have the word dwell richly, and it is the dwelling, not the reading, that the rule is for.

This is why the psalmist speaks of hiding the word within. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, he says, that I might not sin against thee. The word hidden in the heart is there when the book is closed, there in the hour of temptation when no page is open, there in the sleepless night and the sudden trial, rising of itself to guard and to guide. The word that merely passed before the eyes is gone by evening. The word hidden in the heart abides, and rises when it is needed, and this hiding is the very work the rule exists to do, the patient storing of the word within against the day it will be wanted.

And a soul in whom the word dwells richly is known by its fruit. Such a one speaks the word almost without thinking, prays in the words of Scripture because they have become the native tongue of the heart, meets each trouble with a promise that rises unbidden, and judges all things by a standard grown so deep it feels like instinct. This is not the fruit of a single morning’s reading but of years of the word dwelling richly within, meditated day and night, hidden in the heart, become at last the very furniture of the soul. The rule is the long, patient means to this rich indwelling, and the indwelling is worth every unremarkable morning the rule costs.

So let your rule aim not at the covering of chapters but at this rich dwelling. Read less if you must, but meditate more; let the word settle and take root and make its home; hide it in the heart where it will be there when the book is shut. For the end of all the reading and the keeping of hours is simply this, that the word of Christ should dwell in you richly, and out of that indwelling bear its fruit in season.

So build a rule, and keep it, but keep it as a trellis and not a cage. Let it be simple enough to keep and steady enough to shape you, a fixed time for the word and for prayer, the returning practice held through mood and weather, so that your roots go down to the water day after ordinary day. Do not despise it because it is plain and unspectacular, for the plain and unspectacular roots are what bear the fruit. And do not let it harden into legalism, but keep it always in the service of love, the trellis on which your delight in God may climb and grow. His delight is in the law of the LORD, the psalm says of the blessed man, and in his law doth he meditate day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.