Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

Meditation in the Scriptures

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Matt Stone

2011-02-13

Do you realise there is more in the scriptures about meditation than there is about speaking in tongues? The Psalms contain many explicit references to meditation.

More implicitly, both the Old Testament and New Testament affirm the practice of reflecting and remembering God’s word and works, of being mindful and searching our hearts, of seeking God’s face and encountering the living God through visions and entranced prayer. We are encouraged to seek solitude, wisdom and to experience the renewal of the mind.

Curious how we read past so much of this.

Tags Meditation

3 responses to “Meditation in the Scriptures”

Robin Vestal

2011-02-15

By being silent we open our minds to hear God. The practice of silence is probably one of the most valuable things I learned from my semiquaker background. (It’s the thing I miss most in most church services). More formal meditation practices sometimes make me anxious but quieting my mind, letting go and listening works for me.
I suspect meditation which helps each Christian experience God for themselves may not always serve the purposes of leadership who like to direct how people think and approach God.

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Lucy J

2011-02-17

Good point.
I don’t think many people feel comfortable with the idea of silence in the presence of God. Perhaps they fear not hearing anything at all which may suggest to them that God isn’t really there and they feel better at least making or hearing some kind of noise due to unfamiliarity with spiritual communion in the absence of sound.
I can’t help being a little amused at my attempts to find a still point in meditation because after years of working in a noisy environment I suffer with tinnitus. Maybe there’s such a thing as “spiritual” tinnitus?

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Andrew Park

2011-02-18

One of the problems people have in things like prayer is trying to seduce God through their words to be `there’, ostensibly for them at the beckon and call, or to be there `more’ than God already is. They clutter their prayers with with noise, not just from themselves, but the people and their world around them. Even in their mediation they chant `Om’ or do ‘Chi’ noises, or `Amen’ or `Halleluyahs, or do deep breathing exercises etc. as if to make the right `spiritual noises’ to make God more there than they perceive God is for them.
I think it has a lot to do with their theologies of grace, that they believe that they must do something to ‘work God up into being there’. I think that is, in part, why they do this even in meditation.
It leads them to not be able to silent, even if they make the overtures of silence.
We all, in various ways, seem to do this. Maybe its part of the untrusting tendency which seems to come naturally with the human condition.
Given the noisy and numerous exigencies of life to which we have become conditioned to and accustomed to – which we feel so safe and secure in most of the time because we can exercise limited control of it – it becomes so hard to simply trust, believe and accept in faith that God is already there for us, without us having to play drumrolls to invoke His/Her Presence.
The absence of sound is important to meditation. But the `silence’ which really needs to occur for true meditation is far more than just a mere silence of human and technological noise. I think it involves a trust and acknowledgment of God’s `already Presence’ with us, a stilling of our own inner and out voices and noisy clutter we bring into the picture of things, and “resting”, “of intentionally being stilled and still”, of self-emptying of our own personal agendas and “waiting” and being open “listeners to God”, of “just being with God” without demanding God to speak back to us and “hearing God when God does”.

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