"But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." - Psalm 1:2
What is meditation? The Hebrew word translated "meditates" here in Psalm 1:2 is the same Hebrew word that is translated "growl" in Isaiah 31:4: "As a lion or a young lion growls over his prey..." As Eugene Peterson writes, meditation is mastication. It is chewing over a text, growling over it as a lion does over prey that it eats. As the angel instructed John as he gave him the scroll in Revelation 10, "Take and eat it."
Have you ever wondered why we chew our food? Have you thought much about the digestive process? It's quite fascinating-- the GI unit was one of my favorites in medical school. It's a process that literally changes what we eat and thus who we are; it takes large, water-insoluble food molecules and transforms them into small, water-soluble ones that can be absorbed into the plasma of our bloodstreams. It starts in our mouths with the mechanical work of chewing and the chemical work of enzymes in our saliva, continuing in our stomachs with the mechanical process of peristalsis and the chemical work of gastric enzymes, before entering our duodenum, where the pancreas and gallbladder secrete more enzymes. The small intestine has these amazing villi and microvilli that then absorb small nutrient particles into our bloodstream.
The point is, no one would attempt to swallow all of their food whole. We wouldn't grow that way. Much of the digestive process happens without our conscious control, but we do have a part in starting it off, and without this start, none of the rest of the process would happen. Meditating on scripture is like that. It's not quite study, and not quite prayer, but something in between, useful in fact for bridging the two. Like chewing, it takes time. We may pick something from our daily reading section to linger on, writing a verse on a note card to carry with us throughout the day, or just keeping a phrase in our minds. Like chewing, we break it apart; we may repeat it slowly, emphasizing a different word each time. Like chewing, we savor the tastes and textures, by employing our imagination, attending to what emotions it evokes, or noticing grammatical constructs or word choices. One technique is to paraphrase the verse in your own words. Another is to cover up a word and see what you word you would have used in that space. My favorite technique for meditation is memorization, because it forces me to do all of the above, and I find that dwelling on a particular verse, chapter or book for the months it takes me to memorize it brings out entirely different dimensions, flavors, and perspectives.
There are at least two promises here for those who chew over the Word. One, we are blessed, literally "happy." Is not happiness, true happiness, what all of us seek? Two, we discover delight. I remember when Dave and I started dating, there was a period of extended and conscious delight in the other: a sense in which we were reveling in the knowing of each other, finding happiness in small, unique things we discovered about each other. That kind of pleasure is there for us in God's words, waiting to be discovered. And surely enough, it will feed, sustain, energize, and ultimately transform us. "Christians," Peterson wrote, "don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son."
What is meditation? The Hebrew word translated "meditates" here in Psalm 1:2 is the same Hebrew word that is translated "growl" in Isaiah 31:4: "As a lion or a young lion growls over his prey..." As Eugene Peterson writes, meditation is mastication. It is chewing over a text, growling over it as a lion does over prey that it eats. As the angel instructed John as he gave him the scroll in Revelation 10, "Take and eat it."
Have you ever wondered why we chew our food? Have you thought much about the digestive process? It's quite fascinating-- the GI unit was one of my favorites in medical school. It's a process that literally changes what we eat and thus who we are; it takes large, water-insoluble food molecules and transforms them into small, water-soluble ones that can be absorbed into the plasma of our bloodstreams. It starts in our mouths with the mechanical work of chewing and the chemical work of enzymes in our saliva, continuing in our stomachs with the mechanical process of peristalsis and the chemical work of gastric enzymes, before entering our duodenum, where the pancreas and gallbladder secrete more enzymes. The small intestine has these amazing villi and microvilli that then absorb small nutrient particles into our bloodstream.
The point is, no one would attempt to swallow all of their food whole. We wouldn't grow that way. Much of the digestive process happens without our conscious control, but we do have a part in starting it off, and without this start, none of the rest of the process would happen. Meditating on scripture is like that. It's not quite study, and not quite prayer, but something in between, useful in fact for bridging the two. Like chewing, it takes time. We may pick something from our daily reading section to linger on, writing a verse on a note card to carry with us throughout the day, or just keeping a phrase in our minds. Like chewing, we break it apart; we may repeat it slowly, emphasizing a different word each time. Like chewing, we savor the tastes and textures, by employing our imagination, attending to what emotions it evokes, or noticing grammatical constructs or word choices. One technique is to paraphrase the verse in your own words. Another is to cover up a word and see what you word you would have used in that space. My favorite technique for meditation is memorization, because it forces me to do all of the above, and I find that dwelling on a particular verse, chapter or book for the months it takes me to memorize it brings out entirely different dimensions, flavors, and perspectives.
There are at least two promises here for those who chew over the Word. One, we are blessed, literally "happy." Is not happiness, true happiness, what all of us seek? Two, we discover delight. I remember when Dave and I started dating, there was a period of extended and conscious delight in the other: a sense in which we were reveling in the knowing of each other, finding happiness in small, unique things we discovered about each other. That kind of pleasure is there for us in God's words, waiting to be discovered. And surely enough, it will feed, sustain, energize, and ultimately transform us. "Christians," Peterson wrote, "don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son."
No comments:
Post a Comment