I’ve said that meditating on scripture has similarities to steeping a tea bag in hot water. As the tea permeates the water, so meditation on scripture can permeate our souls, our minds, and our hearts in powerfully transformative ways. But how do we practice this important discipline?
The Bible speaks a lot about meditation. But many Western Christians know little about this important discipline. Psalm 1 says that the blessed man, who doesn’t do things that wicked people do, replaces those activities with meditation upon God’s law, resulting in delight.
Part, but only a small part I believe, of the reason this discipline gets scant attention and even less practice is our fear of falling into other kinds of meditations, Eastern varieties, that seem strange or even dangerous.
William Powers book, Hamlet’s Blackberry, urges us to include age-old disciplines in our digitally-overfull lives. I want to apply these techniques in my pursuit of wisdom:
– Stay completely disconnected from my computer and iPhone while having a quiet time. My Bible (the paper one), a notebook, and pen are sufficient.
William Powers has written an attention grabbing book (#4443 on Amazon) and thoughtful Christians should take note. He chose an intriguing title – “Hamlet’s Blackberry” and adds a subtitle of “a practical philosophy for building a good life in the digital age.” Powers joins the growing chorus of social critics who observe that all this digital connectedness is making us hollow, shallow, and less human.
Not all that long ago the hot news story among fans of the dictionary (an admittedly small crowd) was that “unfriend” was the newest word to make its way into the English language. Thanks to Facebook, the word “friend” is now a verb and “unfriend” is part of many people’s vocabularies.
But is this a good advancement in language?
At George Mason University, where I serve, Campus Crusade is sponsoring an event we call “Love Week-Love Haiti.” We are partnering with as many student organizations as we can to pack meals for people in Haiti. We hope these newly formed friendships pave the way for gospel conversations.
I’ve written a piece we plan to give to
Stephen Covey wrote of keeping “first things first.” C.S. Lewis warned that would be impossible unless we kept “second things second.” In our world today, we must fight to keep trivial things trivial.
When we give time, energy, and undo attention to trivial things, they do not move up to become important.
Integration Points is all about thoughtful faith. But we must concern ourselves with more than just what we think about. Thoughtful faith also considers to whom we address our thoughts. We need to develop the important life-skill of thoughtful self-talk. What we tell ourselves can transform us – for good or for ill.
C.S. Lewis on the difference between forgiveness and excusing – from his essay, “On Forgiveness.”
“I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive
I’m sure you’ve noticed the crop of new books aimed at addressing another crop of new books. Christians have produced an enormous arsenal of literature to counter the claims of the new atheists that say God is not good, a delusion, or the cause of everything bad in the world. Just one example, and an excellent one at that, is Greg Ganssle’s A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism.