4 Thoughts On The Lost Art of Meditation
Let me ask you a question.
Do you want to read the Bible more meaningfully? Do you want the scriptures to shape the way you think, feel, and believe? Do you want to bridge the gap between what the head knows and what the heart feels and worships? If so, the key is meditation.
Meditation is a lost art amongst Christians. Meditation is the process of taking a biblical text/idea and thinking through its different components and implications. Personally, a helpful image for meditation has always been one of steeping tea. For the water to extract the different tones and flavors and notes of the tea, you must place the tea bag into the water and let it steep. Letting the two sit together. And slowly, over time, the process of extraction happens. What was compact in the tea bag is drawn out and into the water, changing it. Much in the same way, meditation is a steeping process of our souls and the scriptures. As we meditate, we will start to draw more out of the scripture we read and think on. It will change our attitudes, our affections, our motivations, and our lives.
Recently I have been re-encouraged to bring the lost art of meditation into my daily quiet times. Here are four reflections on meditation:
1- Helps us slow down
How do you enjoy something fully? Not by mere consumption, but by lingering. Give someone who does not drink wine a $10,000 bottle of wine and he will appreciate it no more than the $5 box wine from Walmart. Why? It’s not because he’s not consuming it, he is. But because he has not lingered with wine. He has not spent the time drinking different kinds so that he can taste the subtleties. He does not understand how elevation and climate change the tone. He will struggle to appreciate the differences. So it is with the Scriptures. Many of us are content with the general and vague “helpfulness” of scripture in our lives. We leave the beautiful, fulfilling, multifaceted nature of the Scriptures alone because we refuse to slow down long enough to extract the subtleties. This extracting has less to do with high intellect and more to do with taking your time.
Each of us learn to appreciate different things, and that appreciation comes via lingering. Do you want to appreciate the Lord and all of his beauties? Who is infinitely more robust than the 10,000 dollar bottle of wine? More sweet to the ear than a handcrafted guitar? More awe-inspiring than a stadium of 100,000 or the Grand Canyon at sunset? Then you will have to slow down when you are with Him.
Only a fool looks at the sunset for 2 seconds and says: “Cool! Let’s go watch TV.” Do you want to be awed by your God? Hear His invitation to “come, sit a while”. And then sit a while uninterrupted. Our world isn’t helpful in creating deep thinkers. Your phone is conditioning you to think of “un-stimulated time” as wasteful. Or to flick your mind between small snippets of information quickly, absorbing little so that you can move to the next thing. But you cannot appreciate in fast forward mode, skimming. Do you want to slow down with the scriptures and linger? Learn the art of meditation, and in so doing, you will find that you grow to appreciate the Lord with a greater heart and a greater depth than before.
2- Meditation Connects the head and the heart
How do you take truths that you know and get them into your heart, so that your Christian beliefs begin to inform and shape the way you live, think, and love? You must move beyond intellectual christianity. My fear is that people will simply think meditation is for the intellectuals and the scholars. That it is a mental exercise and nothing more. But the secret to moving meditation beyond a simple mental exercise is involving the heart.
We must learn to make our quite times with God more relational. God speaks to us through His word, but we must begin to express what we are learning back to Him. We do this in any other relationship. They way you go deep with someone is by both hearing the other persons heart expressed, then expressing your own. We can do this with scripture as well. When you read about God, stop and linger. Tell God what you are thinking and feeling. Just today I was sitting in a coffee shop and reading Psalm 103. It talks about the heights and depths of God’s love. “As high as the heavens are from the earth, so great is your love for us, Oh God.” I paused. “Lord, I know this truth. But I confess I do not believe it right now. I feel less than. I feel like you don’t care for me. Please help me see and love that you are a forgiving God. Help my heart see it! Help me see the dimensions of your love, that as high as the heavens above the earth, that is the measure of your love for me!”
When you hear about Gods love and grace, think through that. Allow yourself to feel. Then express that to God. Pray it to Him. Talk to Him about what you are reading. This is how we connect the head and the heart in our times with God. This is an aspect of biblical meditation. Simply expressing back to God in prayer what we’ve learned and how we are (or are not, but want to be) connecting with it.
3- Meditation helps you remember throughout the day
Something I hear often from other Christians is that they struggle to remember what they read in their quite times later in the day. As someone who lives a very busy life, I can relate to this. But the times that I have integrated meditation into my quite times, the more easily I have remembered my scripture and themes throughout the day.
Allow me to go back to the tea example of steeping. As tea steeps, the longer it sits the stronger the water becomes as it extracts the flavors. So it is with meditation. As you take a simple verse or theme from scripture and think on it, pray on it, and allow it to flow over your mind, I promise you will remember it more.
4- Meditation helps you find deeper truths in scripture
So often in our quiet times we simply say a short prayer, read a portion of the text, and if nothing “sticks out” we simply walk away. Sometimes though, miners must strike the rocks many hours before a precious gem is found. Meditation is the tool that you use to mine. It allows you to mine during your commute. While you wait for your food to heat up. While you stand in line at the coffee shop. And as we learned above, this is not a mere intellectual exercise. It is us thinking about God, thinking about the text or theme, and praying it back to God with our hearts! We must learn to go deep in fellowship with God in our times with Him.
The lost art of meditation is difficult to cultivate in this fast-paced world. But it will help you to slow down. It will help you connect your heart with your head, making your relationship with God more than intellectual. And it will help you remember your scripture themes during the entirety of your day while also allowing you to chew on scripture throughout the day.
In Psalm 1 we read:
His delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
David is saying that because he meditates on the law (scriptures) day and night, he is like a tree. Which becomes sturdy as it grows, offering shade and fruit for others. And its roots are being sent deep into the riverbanks gathering nutrients and all that it needs to flourish. Do you want to be that kind of Christian? Then learn the art of biblical meditation.
Learning to meditate with you,
Josh.
How do I meditate?
This is perhaps the greatest question to ask when it comes to the spiritual disciplines. There are values in giving people new and fresh understanding as to why old traditions and disciplines are helpful for today, but at the end of the day, most people know meditation is helpful, even if vaguely. But the question is, how do I meditate? The truth is, I’m still working on an article that more explicitly outlines how we meditate. Would you like to be alerted when it’s finished? Sign up for our newsletter! We never spam your inbox.