Chapter 13 - Meditation

Chapter 13 focused our attention on 7 scripture passages designed to enlighten our understanding of the Biblical use of Meditation:

Ecclesiastes 12:1-7
Colossians 4:4-9
Luke 16:19-31
Deuteronomy 10:12-22
Psalm 119:97-104
Joshua 1:1-9
Luke 20:41-47

The hymn for Chapter 13 was "O Thou in Whose Presence” by Joseph Swain. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Susan Annette Muto, J. I. Packer, Dorothee Soelle, Kenneth Leech, Mary Strong, Morton T. Kelsey and Thomas Merton. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:
· “Listening means being released from willfulness, arrogance, and self-assertiveness. It calls for respectful presence…, for humble openness… Listening is only possible to the degree that we let go of the grip of our egotistic will….”
· “Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God; as a means of communion with God.”
· “The creation of a framework, an atmosphere, a structure, is not prayer, but it is a necessary preliminary to prayer. It is within the atmosphere of inner discipline and simplicity that prayer can begin to grow.”
· “When you meditate or abide in your quiet times of communion, you do not charge in and do something, like saying, ‘I will now be good and move mountains by my act of faith.’ No, you water your garden, knowing that these ideas are growing into a heavenly garden; the indwelling spirit doeth the work, not you: you merely water it.”
· “Living things need an appropriate climate in order to grow and bear fruit. …Meditation is the attempt to provide the soul with the proper environment in which to grow and become. …The flowering of the human soul…is more a matter of the proper psychological and spiritual environment than of particular gifts or disposition or heroism. …Meditation is simple and natural, like a seed growing and becoming a tree. At the same time it requires the right conditions, conditions not provided by the secular world today. If meditation is to touch reality, we must seek out the right climate.”
· “…successful meditation is much more than reasoning or thinking. …All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 13 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site.
John