Tuesday, May 20, 2008

saturate and meditate

Did you know that Christians are mandated to saturate themselves with scripture? The Bible makes it clear that we are to meditate on His word. I like to meditate more than memorize because now that I'm middle-aged, my memorizing mechanism seems to be broken. But I can meditate. Meditate means "deep reflection."

Lately I love Deuteronomy 13:4:

You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and You shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.

I love those six very active verbs - follow, fear, keep, listen, serve, cling. I am at home with some of these but not others.

follow - am I following hard after Him or am I on some other rabbit trail?
fear - do I revere, respect, honor Him or squander these things on something/someone else?
keep - to hold, guide, preserve. What am I keeping close? His commandments or a cheap substitute?
listen - do I take time to be quiet so that I can hear Him?
serve - He has given me gifts to use for His glory. Do I know what they are?
cling - my personal favorite. We cling to many things - life, relationships, money, time, grudges, youth. How freeing it would be if we loosened our grip and clung to Him instead.

I recently read this interesting quote by Elizabeth Drew: The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

The Bible is the only book worth meditating on because it alone can change us. It is literature at its best.












No comments:

Post a Comment