Mapperley Monday Mail - Meditating....

Good morning!

Yesterday at St Jude's we began a new short series looking at some of the basic "how to"s of the Christian life and we started by looking at probably the number one habit recommended in the Bible – meditating on Scripture.

Christian meditation is different from Buddhist meditation; the point of Buddhist meditation is to empty yourself because they see desires as fundamentally wrong and the aim of life as nirvana. Christian meditation might start with emptying yourself (and it sometimes does) but it is with the aim of being filled by God and his word.

The word used in Psalm 1 for meditation is literally "muttering":

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take

or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

and who mutters his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither –

whatever they do prospers.

The big idea is that we find some way of taking God's word and letting it soak into us slowly, so that it gets past the barrier we often put up between what we know in our head and what we feel in our hearts.

So how do we do this meditation thing? How does it work in detail? There aren't hard and fast rules because it depends on the person and depends on the context and the passage. Sometimes it's good to set time aside; sometimes it's something you can do while doing a task or commuting to work. I know someone who worked in London and didn't think they had time to read the Bible in the mornings. So they'd just take one verse or phrase, repeat it to themselves a few times and then keep on repeating and pondering it on the tube on the way to work.

Some people find learning a few verses helpful; I find that even if I forget them the next day, learning a verse for a while just helps me to chew it over and pay attention to the words. Some people find singing it helps. Some people like to analyse it and work it out in a very mind-oriented way. I do that – I find I usually need a piece of paper to write stuff down on to help me think. Some people find that imagining themselves inside the situation or drawing the verse or writing a song or a poem about the verse can work really well and really feeling it for themselves is more helpful. Some people choose to take a verse that particularly affects one area of their life (I told a story in the sermon about anxiety) and repeating it to themselves when they need to hear it.

As we're going to be seeing next week, so much of the Christian life is a case of finding what works for you in your situation. We're different and our situations are different. But what God has given us in his word, and by his Spirit living in our hearts is always enough to thoroughly equip us for every good work he calls us to do.

May we be able to spend time this week meditating on God's word, and so be transformed more and more into the likeness of his Son,

God bless,

John