Psalms 119:59

Psalms 119:59

I. Hebrew scholars tell us that when they get to the root of these words, "I thought on my ways," they find a weaver there working at his loom. That is the figure that lies deep beneath this word the figure of a man working skilfully at his web, looking to his garment, that he may not be ashamed whatever side may be exposed, careful that on both sides his workmanship is faultless. "I thought on my ways." I turned my life upside down, round about, looked at it from all points of view, as a weaver with his web, so as to have no seamy side, but that it might be equally perfect in its workmanship in all its parts. And when I saw I was wrong, I turned my feet unto God's testimonies.

II. We are not too ready to think about our ways; it is not so easily done as you may think. We learn from the words of David that there are various ways of helping ourselves to look at our ways, to get a sight of ourselves. When David looked at his web embroidery, after looking at the pattern on his frame, he would, as he was anxious to work, and in the measure of his being anxious, and as it grew in his hands he would become displeased. That is always the sign of a fine worker. No matter what the work is, it is always the sign of a first-rate craftsman to be never content. That is one feature of the good artist, whatever he is working at; he goes back to the inception of it in his mind, and thinks how fair, and beautiful, and without flaw it lay in his mind: and when he sees it on the frame, on the loom, he sees how far short it has fallen of the image he had about it when it lay on his mind. Always when we look from the stage of hope and intuition we see how far short our present life is. But we can also look at our present ways not only from the past, but by going forward and looking down on them as they are now. Nothing is more stimulating or more improving than to go out of the present and look back, or to ask how we would wish it to be when the work is no longer in our hands. What is it that demoralises the present and makes us weary? That demoralising thing we have yet the present spared us to turn from into the way of God's commands.

A. Whyte, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 165.

Reference: Psalms 119:59. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1181.