Musings on meditation

[Frank Lee]

When I was first saved I literally couldn't stand to be alone with myself. My newly saved spirit man hated the company of my vile, unredeemable natural Esau flesh man. It had been prophesied over me that I was really going to get into the word. This by the same prophet that first uold us that God was going to send us children after fourteen childless years.

No, I haven't forgotten meditation. For the next number of years I buried myself in the pages of the Bible. I was indeed washing my mind and spirit in the Holy water of the word. Holy water has had the devil boiled out of it!

As a consequence of reading and thinking and meditating on the word for hours and hours every day. I became at last fit company for myself.

As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. So true. Think on these things. Garbage in garbage out.

God is listening to our every single thought. Every one. Many Christians, especially those not gloriously baptized in the Holy Spirit, are unaware of how closely God monitors us at all times. This because of the intense love wherewith He loves us.

Good meditations will bring forth excellent fruit. With a little work the beach boys song good vibrations could be transformed into good meditations.

... I'm picking up good meditations. God's giving me new revelations... Good good good meditations,...

Meditation upon the things of God brings furtherance, additions to what we know and understand about a certain thing or things. Meditation is a generator of chain links. If a subject of meditation might be seen as a chain, then continued Godly meditation will by the grace of God forge new links that will add to the chain of wisdom upon that subject.

How many healings and deliverances have been worked by meditating on the word of God? So many they cannot be counted. Physician heal thyself.

 

[Dr. Jonathan Österman]

If you feel meditation is an Eastern Religion hang-up, this is no thread for you. These are but a few thoughts Richard Foster gave on Christian meditation.

A beautiful kind of contemplative prayer is meditation upon the creation. Now, this is no infantile pantheism, but a majestic monotheism in which the great Creator of the universe shows us something of his glory through his creation. The heavens do indeed declare the glory of God and the firmament does show forth his handiwork (Ps. 19:1). Evelyn Underhill recommends, “…begin with that first form of contemplation which the old mystics sometimes called ‘the discovery of God in his creatures!’”

So, give your attention to the created order. Look at the trees, really look at them. Take a flower and allow its beauty and symmetry to sink deep into your mind and heart. Listen to the birds — they are the messengers of God. Watch the little creatures that creep upon the earth. These are humble acts, to be sure, but sometimes God reaches us profoundly in these simple ways if we will quiet ourselves to listen.

There is a another form of meditation that is in some ways quite the opposite of the one just given. It is to meditate upon the events of our time and to seek to perceive their significance.

We have a spiritual obligation to penetrate the inner meaning of events, not to gain power but to gain prophetic perspective. Thomas Merton writes that the person “…who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time.”

This form of meditation could be accomplished with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other! You must not, however, be controlled by the absurd political clichés and propaganda fed us today. Actually, newspapers are generally far too shallow and slanted to be of much help. We would do well to hold the events of our time before God and ask for prophetic insight to discern where these things lead. Further, we should ask for guidance for anything we personally should be doing to be salt and light in our decaying and dark world.

Do you ever meditate on anything? If so, what, and why, and how?

I do the early Christian meditation of self-emptying.

I have just created a new thread to discuss it :

Christian Meditation and Interfaith Dialog

Christian Meditation and Interfaith Dialog Richard Rohr, as a Catholic priest and Franciscan monk, will offer a concise history of how Western Christianity once had, soon lost, tried to retrieve, and now is roundly rediscovering its own traditional understanding of unitive consciousness...

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