Make Time to Meditate
The alarm goes off at 6:00am like the starting gun at the Kentucky derby and it’s all legs and sweat and flying dust until you cross the finish line at 10:30pm: Shower, dress, start the coffee pot, rouse the kids, pound a cup of coffee, find someone’s missing shoe, clean up the spilled cereal, fix lunch, find the missing homework, send someone back to his room for a wardrobe adjustment, drink more coffee, find your car keys, 30 second huddle with your spouse about afternoon plans: who is practicing what and where today?; someone hears the bus coming, the dog is eating from the kitchen table, the baby is crying; someone forgot their lunch box. And it's only 7:23am.
Maybe you can resonate. Whether you are married or single, young or old, there are particular seasons where we feel like life is coming at us too fast to make time for personal devotion. “I just don’t have enough time,” we say. “Where will I find an hour to sit and read the word?”
Even in those seasons, though we might not like to admit it, many of us still find time to check social media. Though we might collapse exhausted onto the couch at 10pm, we still can manage the attention for an episode of that series we’re catching up on. Maybe we fail to spend time in the Scriptures because we’re frustrated with how little we get out of the time we do spend there. Perhaps we think that we must need more time to make our personal devotions “worth it.”
But the problem is not the lack of time, the problem is that we might be using the time we do have ineffectively. Perhaps we have forgotten how to meditate.
Meditation is the act of ruminating—turning over a truth about God in our heart; examining it; savoring it; enjoying it. Meditation is letting the bible brew in your brain. Meditation is taking truth and, by sustained reflection, extracting all the goodness we possibly can from it in conversation with God. As seventeenth-century pastor Edmund Calamy says, “meditation is nothing else but a conversing with God, the soul’s colloquy with God; and it is fit that we should every day walk with God.”
The Puritans recognized that meditation is the nucleus of all spiritual life. It cultivates in us a deep love for God. It causes us to rightly reverence and fear him. It magnifies the kindness and goodness of Christ. Meditation applies God’s promises and equips us to rely on him when all other helps fail. It helps us appropriately value the good things of the world. Meditation cultivates grace and gratitude in our heart, it clarifies our priorities, it helps us live in obedience and fight the temptations of the evil one. Meditation plants Scripture deep in our heart and in our memory.
Meditation thrives when we give it time. But what it needs more than time, is focus. Therefore, we can still deeply benefit from meditation even in small snatches of time on the days when life is moving 100 miles an hour.
So here are two simple ways to make 10 minutes of meditation count.
#1: Speak Scripture. Take one verse and speak it out loud. Repeat it in the car and emphasize a different word each time. See how repeating the verse turns your heart to gratitude or brings conviction or relieves anxiety. “The LORD is my shepherd…The Lord is MY shepherd. The Lord is my SHEPHERD.” You’d be surprised how the simple act of speaking Scripture aloud will stir up your affections for God. Maybe your kids will ask who you are talking to.
#2 Pray Scripture. The proper beginning and ending of all meditation is prayer. Turn the content of your meditation to prayer—“Lord Jesus, thank you for being my shepherd. Since you are Lord over all things, I know I don’t need to worry. Forgive me for letting my affections be shaped more by my circumstances than my confidence in your care.” Maybe you will find new vigor in your prayer life.
So, church, the exhortation this morning is this: Feast on the riches of God’s works and ways this week by meditating on his Word.
Let’s pray together:
Heavenly Father, we acknowledge that we too frequently fail to meditate on your word and, in so doing, we neglect to remember all that you are to us and all that you have done for us, in Christ. Forgive us, we pray. Our neglect of your word reminds us of other ways we have sinned against you, and we bring these before you now in this time of silent confession. […]
Lord, your word declares your abundant goodness, and we look to you with confidence knowing that you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. You are good to all, and your mercy is over all that you have made. Help us live in light of your promises, in the power of the Spirit, because we ask in Jesus’s name, Amen.