Chapter 14 - Study

Chapter 14 used the following 7 scripture passages to sharpen our appreciation for the value of Bible and devotional study:

Philippians 4:8-9
1 Timothy 4:6-16
Deuteronomy 17:18-20
2 Peter 1:3-8
Psalm 119:97-104
Luke 8:16-18
Proverbs 2:1-22

The hymn for Chapter 14 was "How Blest Are They Who Hear God’s Word” by Johan Nordahl Brun. (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 Anthony Bloom, Evelyn Underhill, Susan Annette Muto, Richard J. Foster, Norman Cousins, Paul Tournier, Thomas Merton, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Henri J. Nouwen, and Philip S. Watson’s compilation of “The Message of the Wesleys”. (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:
· “So there is need for some sort of prayer which is not spontaneous but which is truly rooted in conviction. …It is a question of learning by heart enough meaningful passages, from the psalms or from the prayers of the saints. …one day when you are so completely low, so profoundly desperate that you cannot call out of your soul any spontaneous expression, any spontaneous wording, you will discover that these words come up and offer themselves to you as a gift of God, as a gift of the Church, as a gift of holiness, helping our simple lack of strength.”
· “The question of the proper feeding of our own devotional life must of course include the rightful use of spiritual reading. And with spiritual reading we may include formal or informal meditation upon Scripture or religious truth: the brooding consideration, the savouring – as it were the chewing of the cud – in which we digest that which we have absorbed, and apply it to our own needs.”
· “Formative reading thus involves a shift…from ‘form-giving,’ in which we are inclined to impose our meaning on the text, to ‘form-receiving,’ in which we let its meaning influence us. …The text is like a bridge between the limits of our life here and now and the possibilities awaiting us if we open our minds and hearts to God.”
· “Many Christians…may be faithful in church attendance and earnest in fulfilling their religious duties and still they are not changed. …Why? Because they have never taken up one of the central ways God uses to change us: study. Jesus made it unmistakably clear that it is the knowledge of the truth that will set us free.”
· “I have learned to distrust speed reading and instant knowledge. Few joys of the mind can compare with the experience of lingering over deft character description, or hovering over a well-wrought passage.”
· “Countless writings underlie the urgency…of rediscovering the value of meditation, of silence, of prayer, of devotion. …The religious life must be fed. …If we bring our minds back again and again to God, we shall by the same inevitable law be gradually giving the central place to God, not only in our inner selves, but also in our practical everyday lives.”
· “Spiritual life is not mental life. …Nor…a life of sensation, a life of feeling… Nor does the spiritual life exclude thought and feeling. It needs both. …If man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.”
· “It cannot be that the people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people. A people who talk much will know little. …Fix some part of every day for private exercises. …Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. …there is no other way else you will be a trifler all your days….”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 14 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site.
John