June: Walking the Path of Life

Every month we choose a single thread to follow, a phrase from Scripture that can sit in the background of the daily readings and give them a shape. For June the thread is Psalm 16:11. David says that God makes known to him the path of life, that in his presence there is fullness of joy, and that at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.

We chose it for three reasons. The first is that June is a walking month. School lets out. Evenings lengthen. People take vacations, sit on porches, and go places. The psalm's image of a path fits a season in which many of us will literally be on the move. The second is that the verse contains a whole theology of joy in one sentence, and most of us need that more than we admit. The third is that Peter preached this verse on the day of Pentecost, which the church calendar places in late May this year. So June begins in the afterglow of the Spirit's coming, with a psalm the apostles used to explain the resurrection.

Here is how the theme will unfold. Each week the daily readings will continue through the Psalms, and we will keep returning to the question of what it means for a path to be made known. Not discovered by trial and error, not engineered, but shown. The Bible is confident that God guides his people, and equally confident that the guidance comes chiefly through his word, his Spirit, and his church rather than through signs in the sky. We will try to be practical about that. How does a person actually find the path of life in June of 2026, with a job and a mortgage and a teenager who does not want to go to church?

We will also press on the middle of the verse, the phrase about fullness of joy in God's presence. Many Christians believe in joy the way they believe in Antarctica, as a real place they will never visit. We want to argue that the psalm means what it says, that joy is available now, and that its location is not a better circumstance but a Person. That has implications for how we handle boredom, disappointment, and the peculiar restlessness of summer, when the calendar is emptier and the heart often is too.

Finally, the end of the verse looks forward. Pleasures forevermore at God's right hand. That is where Jesus is now, seated, according to Hebrews 1:3 and many other passages. The path of life ends at his side. The whole month is meant to be walked with that destination in view, because a path is only a path if it goes somewhere.

A few practical suggestions for making this your theme too. Memorize the verse. It is short, and by the end of the month it should be yours. Take one walk each week without headphones, and pray the verse as you go, asking God to make the path known. Read Acts 2:22-36 once this month and notice how the apostles used the psalm. And when you feel the summer restlessness rise, do the thing Psalm 16:8 describes: set the LORD before you. Look at him rather than at the empty afternoon.

The path of life, in the end, is not a technique. It is a Person walking ahead of us who has already been through the grave and come out. In his presence there is fullness of joy. That is the theme. Everything else this month is commentary.