I am really looking forward to studying and working on keeping the Ten Commandments over the next ten months. I remember feeling, when I took Rise Above It as a course in college (and we worked on a commandment each week for the ten weeks of the term), that I was just starting to get a handle on what I needed to work on for a particular commandment when it was time to move on to the next commandment. Having a whole month to reflect on each commandment will give me—and all of us—the chance to really work on each commandment. And the chance for each commandment to really work on each of us.
Psalm 1 talks about meditating in the law of the LORD “day and night” and in Psalm 119 the psalmist says, “O how I love Your law! All the day it is my contemplation. Through Your commandments, You have made me wiser than my enemies; for they are with me to eternity” (97, 98). Sometimes we need to spend some real time meditating, contemplating, pondering something to make progress with it. We need the chance to learn; to try something; to fail; to learn some more and try again. Changing my mind doesn’t happen quickly; changing my heart takes even longer. I want to be wiser than the evil spirits who are always with me, always trying to get me to break the commandments. Studying and trying to live according to each commandment for the next ten months feels like it might be just what I need, and just what a lot of us need, to make some real progress in our ability to live according to the Lord’s commandments.
And we don’t have to do this work alone! This will be a team effort. We have to do our own individual work fighting our own individual demons, but many of us, at the same time, turning our attention to understanding and living according to a particular commandment will help each of us in our individual work. And what better way to feel part of and be part of a church community than by supporting each other in doing this essential work?
It might be that the monthly Rise Above It meetings are not at a time that work for you; it might be that you cannot or do not want to participate in the Rise Above It program in these coming months. But, even so, I hope you will still strongly consider meditating on each of the Ten Commandments, one commandment at a time, for the next ten months. It will be a blessing to you personally and to the people around you, and it will bring you into a closer relationship with your God.