Gift Number Fifteen — JC's Village

Don’t you just love it when there’s something that you can indulge in all you want and there’s just hardly a downside to it all? You don’t have to measure, track, document … just dive in and enjoy. For instance - you can hardly go wrong drinking water. There’s almost no way to take a walk “wrong” - if you can go for a walk, it’s a win! Another thing we can hardly mess up is meditation - which is today’s gift.

Just a minute ago I went to BibleGateway.com and did a wild card search on meditat* (wild card searches - in short - let you search every form of a root word - so the wild card search I did today will pull up results for meditate, meditation, meditates, meditating … you get it). I did the search using the NASB 1995 version and that little search pulled up 24 results. 2 dozen. Easy peasy. I’ve done lengthier studies on meditation in the past in multiple versions and written lengthy word-documents on all I learned - but let me sum up.

The Bible - both in the New and Old Testaments encourages and assumes that we will meditate.

Meditation is one of the few things that we can do and which will - regardless of what we have going on with your or my particular brain, will improve it. Read that again. Whatever you have going on with your brain - meditation makes it better. Jumpy thoughts - meditation helps. Stubborn/stuck thoughts - meditation. Anxious - meditation. Clueless - meditation. Meditation is GOOOOOD for that stuffin’ up there in your coconut. I’m not saying meditation will in one go take you from where you are to some exalted, illuminated plain of bla bla bla … what I am saying is that the more we engage in this practice - the more we benefit.

Meditation stumps some folks - how to do it. There are so many excellent resources on how to do it - I can’t begin to do better than what’s already available out there. Some of you might still be influenced by fearful thinking about how dangerous meditation is - if you find yourself there - I’d encourage you to go to your favorite Bible search tool - whether that’s an old-school concordance (exhaustive - of course!) or an on-line tool - and read for yourself what Scripture says about meditation. The Bible has a LOT to say about when to do it (I’ll sum up again - “often” is the answer) and where to do it (summary: “everywhere”) … The thing we want most to find is how. For that I encourage you to take a page from Isaac’s book - who in Genesis 24:63 - went out into the field. Maybe you live where I live and this time of year is not the ideal time to go sit in a field no matter how great meditating is. That’s okay. Go in your mind. Recall a field - whatever kind of field you like - and sit somewhere with your thoughts there - and quiet yourself. Slow your breathing down. And then I suggest you just start by trying to hold an image of Christ in your mind. When I first began - just keeping my breathing calm was difficult enough to occupy my attention completely.

Successful meditation isn’t perfectly keeping only one image unwaveringly steady in your mind. You’re not a statue - and your mind isn’t a painting. Successful meditation is trying - and the more you try the more successful you can be. The more you try - the better you’ll get at holding your thoughts on one thing - instead of the infinite jumble we usually have going on. This will benefit you in more ways than you can imagine. Be patient with yourself.

In my experience with meditation, since I started doing it daily seven some years ago, meditation is a gift that keeps on giving and giving and giving. It is the greatest spriritual practice that is under-practiced.