How Many Days Are in This Month?

    Some time we use little mnemonic devices to remember certain things. One of them is the following little poem which keeps us straight on the number of days in a month. I rely on this poem a lot even though I am getting quite old. I find myself repeating the little poem to determine if a month has 30 days or if it has 31 days. I have February down so don't worry about it too much. “Thirty days hath September,April, June and November; February has twenty eight alone All the rest have thirty-one Except in Leap Year, that's the time When February's Days are twenty-nine” There are two examples of mnemonic devices being used in the Old Testament. One of the is Psalm 119. Psalm 119:1 says, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.”      

         Verses 1 through 8 all begin with the Hebrew letter “aleph.” Verses 9 through 16 all begin with the Hebrew letter “Beth.” Many Bibles will have the Hebrew letter for the verses in groups of 8 verses each. A child could learn the Hebrew alphabet by learning Psalm 119. We can also learn the same alphabet if we desire to do so, by studying this particular Psalm. We can also discover a more valuable lesson from the Psalm and that is the Psalmist love for the Word of God. There are a total of 176 verses, or 8 verses each for the total of 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In the Hebrew, each verse begins with the corresponding letter. Try to do that in English and you will find it most difficult to come up with words that begin with each letter of the English alphabet that make sense in what you are writing. Of the 176 verses, all but five verses speak about God's Word. That has always been amazing to me. I often challenge people to find the five verses which do not speak about God's Word. The Psalmist will refer to the Word as the law, the testimony, the precepts, the statutes, the commandments and the word. The question comes up for us is “How much do we love God's Word?” Would you be willing to spend the time in this Psalm to memorize it? We have heard of people who do spend a lot of time memorizing the Scriptures and they are few indeed. It was said that Jack Van Impe had memorized the New Testament and we have a few others who have memorized large portions of Scripture. The older we get, the more we say that we can't memorize anything anymore and so don't even try. God's Word, however, is important enough that it demands to be memorized. Even this portion has verses that proclaim the value of memorizing God's Word, as it says in verses 9 and 11. “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart...” Spend some time in this Psalm and read it often and perhaps you too, will develop a strong desire to have God's Word in your heart. Praise God today for His Word. Oh, and by the way, one of the other portions of alphabetized the in Hebrew, scriptures is found in Lamentations, the first 4 chapters. The fifth chapter is not alphabetized.