I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 23-31.

    There is a common theme running through most of these psalms: trust in the Lord and He will protect you. Today’s passage starts with Psalms 23, which is familiar to anyone who knows the Bible even a little bit. It is familiar to so many because it offers great comfort. Yet that familiarity may lead us to miss its great meaning, meaning which is echoed and amplified in the other psalms in today’s passage. These psalms tell us that God will look after us, protect us, and guide our paths. He will honor us in front of our enemies so that they will know that He will not allow them to destroy us. However, we often miss that a condition of that protection is that we follow God’s guidance. Again and again throughout these psalms the psalmist tells us that God guides us along the paths which we should take.

    So, the psalmist tells us that God will protect those who trust Him. If we truly trust God we will walk down the paths which He guides us along. When the psalmist says in Psalm 23, “Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid,” the subtext is that he is in that valley because God guided him there. The psalmist is seeking to inspire us to walk down the path which God guides us no matter where that path leads us. He assures us that God will direct us to the correct path. No matter how dark and frightening the path may appear, we can trust that God has chosen it for us and will protect us as we walk along it.