29 September 2009
The Necessity of Meditation on Truth
Posted by pastorjoe under: Articles .
It’s been far too long since I’ve posted anything here. Today, I’d like to direct your attention to a insightful and challenging quote I came across in my reading this morning. Consider the following:
“Christian meditation is the contemplative and earnest fixing of the mind on the great spiritual realities which the Bible has revealed to us . . . Meditation is the soul’s conference with itself; the discourse which it holds with truth obtained, and impressions received, in the secret sanctuary of its own consciousness. It is the . . . solemn endeavor of the soul to bring home to itself divine things; and so to resolve, ponder, and digest them, as to work their transforming power into every element and faculty of its being . . . It is the digestive process, by which spiritual food nourishes the soul and promotes its growth in holiness.
Lack of meditation is the primary reason that so many professing Christians, in spite of exposure to the most excellent teaching, still remain ignorant, unstable, and unfruitful; ‘ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ Instruction flows in upon them from all sides; but their hearts and minds are like sieves, out of which everything runs as fast as it is poured in. The impressions which truth makes on their minds are as temporary as characters traced on the sands of the seashore, which the next wave erases forever. But meditation imprints truth deeply on the conscience, and engraves it on the tablets of ‘the inner man,’ as with the point of a diamond . . . It thus becomes incorporated into the soul; and forms, as it were, a part of it; and it is ever present, to regulate the heart’s affections and to control and guide all of its movements.”
~ Oliver Heywood, 1666 (quoted in Pleasing People by Lou Priolo)