Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: meditation

  • New Series on Familiar Passages

    New Series on Familiar Passages

    After I posted the final entry on Psalm 119, I thought I might take a break from daily meditations, but my wife has challenged me with the suggestion that I should post some meditations on familiar passages, such as, she suggested, Psalm 23.

    I was a bit reluctant to start, but then I spent some time reading today and I decided to try it. So tomorrow morning at 7 am my first post, an introduction to Psalm 23, should appear.

    I’m going to continue the same process of study and meditation, not trying to provide exegetical commentary so much as thoughts and application. My study process does involve exegesis, however, so that will be involved.

    I hope this will be enjoyable for all.

  • Psalm 119:148 – Meditating

    Psalm 119:148 – Meditating

    My eyes stay open during the night
    to meditate on your word.

    It’s nice on the 148th day of a series of meditations to have a verse (really another verse) about meditating.

    I will mention again what I said yesterday regarding the time and circumstances. Look for the time and place you can meditate. Don’t expect that you have to duplicate what is working for someone else. If you are getting a good night’s sleep, don’t imagine that your spirituality is substandard, and hope for sleep loss in order to be more holy.

    There are some things that are important about meditating on God’s word. We often start and unfortunately also often stop with exegesis, with getting a historical understanding of the data. Knowing what various prophets or kings did in the far past is important, but it is most important as a foundation for understanding your present relationship with God and your present calling. That involves more than historical data.

    For me the time reading the Bible is important to most other aspects of my life. It is a time when I can receive new light, when I pray, when I find strength for my next task, when I can feel God’s presence.

    The history is important. We should always be anchored in what the text actually says and what it meant when first spoken. But as believers today, we need to understand the application to the moment. That often goes well beyond that historical study.

    Here are some of those things I find are important:

    1. There is no shortcut. It takes time. This is not just time to read reference works, but time to let the text sink in.
    2. It takes both extensive and intensive reading. Don’t look down on the fast reader or on the one involved with nit-picky details. Both extremes have value. Try to incorporate different ways of approaching the text.
    3. It is part of worship. Meditating on God’s word brings you closer to God.
    4. It should be corporate, i.e., the study of the Bible should not be just about your individual time and your individual view. Test your results against what others learn.
    5. It should be individual. While working with others is important, learning to hear from God yourself is also critical. Be tested by the crowd. Don’t be led by the crowd.
    6. The Bible itself is more important than commentary. Put some emphasis on reading the Bible.
    7. There is value in those who have studied before. Let them help expand your vision and understanding, but don’t let their views replace learning from the text yourself.
    8. Have time for action. When you read about helping those less fortunate or about testifying to your faith in Jesus, you need to also pause to take action.

    I love this Psalm. I’m enjoying every verse. But this set of meditations is just one approach.

    What will you learn from scripture today?

  • Psalm 119:48 – Meditating

    Psalm 119:48 – Meditating

    And I lift up my hands to your commands which I love,
    and I will meditate on your statutes.

    I haven’t been entirely consistent in how I translate the first word of each couplet in this section, but they begin with the Hebrew letter vav (or waw as is sometimes taught in classical Hebrew). This would be “and” or some sort of connective in English. Verse 48 is the end of the eight-verse section. Tomorrow we start on the letter zayin, which sounds like the English ‘z’.

    The first word in verse 49 is zekor, the imperative ‘remember’. Addressed to God. We’ll talk about that tomorrow!

    But the word ‘remember’ came to me as I thought about my project of meditating on this chapter. My practice has been to read the verse just before I go to bed, setting the subject for my mind for the following day. I read it again in the morning. It’s interesting to me how many times I can’t remember which verse I’m to meditate on when I get up, or how many times I might have to remind myself during the day. My mind doesn’t just wander. It charges berserkly from subject to subject and often doesn’t want to settle anywhere. I have quick practices I use to restore my focus.

    So what as it meant to meditate on these verses?

    First, because I intend to write something, I have had a focus for my thinking. What would it be good to say about this particular verse?

    Second, it has become part of the way I focus my activities of the day. If I find myself needing moment to refocus, reading the verse or remembering it and thinking about it provides me with a punctuation point for my day.

    I could have a worse way to restore my focus!

    This is also a different way of handling scripture, and I think it’s valuable. My normal focus is very factual. I started studying biblical languages because I wanted to get the meaning of scripture as precise as possible. I still value a precise reading of scripture and the attempt to understand what a passage meant to the person who first wrote it and those who first heard it.

    That process of exegesis, and critical analysis of every possible aspect of the text remains an anchor point. In studying these verses, I consult the original languages and ancient translations. I look at possible relationships between these words and those in other ancient languages. I always want to start with what the psalmist was likely thinking as he wrote these words.

    I cannot know that precisely. That’s one reason I call it an anchor point. It’s easy to conclude that if I can’t understand something perfectly and precisely I might as well not try. I compare this to the building of an aircraft. There are always tolerances in measurements. Nothing is perfect. But the builders can never forget working to those standards, or disaster will follow. History has shown us how that works!

    But scripture is not limited to being a source of data. It provides a way of thinking and a basis for thinking. That’s where meditation on scripture is so valuable. A scripture can shape your thinking about something that the original author didn’t even conceive. (I realize that God conceives of everything. I’m talking about the human author.)

    The process of deciding can point the way to how other decisions are to be addressed or to principles one can apply in many areas. The text can also simply provide the catalyst for other ways of thinking. Scripture is a written form of the powerful, creative Word of God, and that Word can empower things that previous readers or the original writers were unaware of.

    In reading from and meditating on God’s Word, you can provide the opportunity for you to hear God speak.

    What new approach could you take to benefit from God’s Word?

    (Featured image from Adobe Stock By Sensvector. Licensed. Not public domain.)