Eat This Book
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Series: Practice the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalm M1 Sermon Notes: August 22, 2010
Title: Eat This Book
Text: Psalm 1; 34:8; 119:103
BIG IDEA:
Eating the Scriptures sets us on a path to the blessed life.
Sermon Notes:
When Sakiko and I were in England, we rented a car to visit some long-time family friends who lived near Wales and I remember we encountered many roundabout on the way. If you are in England road and you approach a (roundabout—show powerpoint)
Your browser may not support display of this image.
like this with various paths shooting off the circle like spokes in a wheel, one of the paths may have a sign in front of it that reads “North to Edinburgh”; another sign may be marked “West to Cardiff”; another sign may read “East to London.” (use the pointer).
The road you take on the roundabout you choose will determine the direction you take. And the direction you take will determine what you are exposed to. If you stay on the road long enough, your road, in a manner of speaking, will determine the kind of person you will become. You will grow into a different kind of person if your road leads you to settle in a quiet village in the highlands of Scotland. And you will become another kind of person if you settle into an apartment in the centre of London.
Robert Frost, in his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, wrote:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
Took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Psalm 1 describes two paths that diverge. One leads path leads to blessedness. The other leads to destruction.
Psalm 1
1 Blessed are those
who do not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but who delight in the law of the LORD
and meditate on his law day and night.
3 They are like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.
This morning we’re beginning to new series from the Psalms called Practicing the Presence of God: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer. The blessed person is a person as we see in the Psalm who meets God in the Word. The blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—
The wicked or the ones who live as are like chaff. The language reflects the practice of winnowing grain at harvest time. In the ancient Near East threshing floors were on elevated ground, and on the floor was the mixture of straw, stubble, and grain. In the harvest season in the cool breeze of the evening, the farmer would go out and take his pitchfork to this mixture and toss the stubble and grain into the steady breeze. The wind would blow away the lighter chaff and husks, but the more substantial grain would fall to the floor. The Bible says that those who live as if there is not God will eventually be blown away like the chaff.
The Psalmist invites to become people who deeply rooted like beside stream of water… to enter a blessed life.
What it mean to live this blessed life?
The psalm begins with the word “blessed...” Jesus picks up on this term blessed in his famous Sermon on the Mount and uses it eight times… to begin this sermon: blessed, blessed, blessed...
What does blessed mean? There are two words in Hebrew that are translated “blessed” in English: One is the word “baruk” which almost always refers to God blessing someone. The word here in Psalm 1 is a more general term “ashre,” and it is a word that can be used in non-religious contexts. It can mean “happy,” “fortunate,” “lucky.” Eugene Petersen the pastor who translated the Bible into the modern English version, The Message, likes to define the word blessed as “Holy luck.”
The word “blessed” has the idea of being favoured now, but even more favoured in the days to come.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all seek this blessedness, this good fortune, this happiness. Pascal was right: “All people seek happiness. There are no exceptions.”
The psalmist says that the truly blessed person, the truly happy person, the person with holy luck, is the person who does NOT do certain things. There is a negative element in this psalm, and there is a positive element, too. The blessed person does certain things. There’s a negative and a positive part in this Psalm. The Psalmist begins with the negative, i.e. what the blessed person does not do. In our series on the book Judges we had a several messages that have pointed out what not of what not to—including don’t sacrificing his daughter to God as Jephthah did.
In verse 1 the Psalmist says:
1 Blessed are those
who do not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
The blessed man or woman does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. She does not allow the culture or the values promoted by the media to shape their thinking; or to use J. B. Phillips’ phrase “she or he” does let the ungodly squeeze his or her mind into the world’s mold.”
William Deresiewicz last fall spoke to the freshman class at West Point Academy, and he warned them that they would not be able to think deeply about issues if they were constantly being interrupted by Facebook messages, Twitter Tweets, fiddling with their Ipod, watching something on YouTube. He writes: Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice [or God’s voice].
That’s what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he said, The person who should inspire and lead their race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other people, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.
Henry David Thoreau said, Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.
Dereswiewicz goes on to ask if there is any advantage to reading books over Tweets or Facebook posts. There are two advantages a book has over a Tweet. First, is that the person who wrote the book thought about it a lot more carefully, and, second, the book is old. This is not a disadvantage, but precisely what makes them valuable is that they stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they are not from today.
People of any age tend to be overconfident about what they know. In the Victorian age some people felt that they would bring scientific discovery to an end because they had discover everything there was to know about science. But they were just on verge of a scientific revolution. One day our grandchildren will look back on our time and will wonder how could we have believed ___________.
And part of the great value of Scripture is that it does not reflect the conventional wisdom of our day. We believe that Scripture itself is no ordinary book, but was inspired by God. It contains eternal wisdom and reveals the nature and the character of God to us. That is why Scripture is sometimes referred to as revelation.
Deresiewicz is not saying that it’s categorically wrong to use Facebook, Twitter (someone sent me from Tenth some me this CARTOON), YouTube, surf the Internet, or watch TV. But if we are constantly marinating ourselves in these media, we will find that we are constantly being marinated in other people’s thinking (hmm. I think I’ll have some yogurt and granola now… or The lines are short at Disneyland today. Good time to visit) and the conventional wisdom of our day. We will not be able to think for ourselves.
We will not be able to listen to what the Quakers call the inner light or to the voice of God that we hear in Scripture.
And so the blessed person is the person who says no to certain things, does not allow himself or herself to be continually marinated in the conventional wisdom of the day. They are able to transcend the conventional thinking of their day--how?
By meditating on the Word of God day and night (verse 2).
We read that the blessed does find that reading Scripture a duty, but a delight. The original Hebrew states that the person on the path of the blessed life meditates over the law of God. I know the word “law” can sound negative to us. Perhaps we envision the lawyer’s office filled where the shelves are filled with thick volumes, or a police officer chasing us. The word “law” in the Psalm is the translated from Hebrew word Torah. The word Torah simply means teaching or instruction. Depending on the context, Torah can refer to the first five books of Moses or all of God’s revelation. Torah comes from the root word “yarah” which means “to throw something” (like a javelin) towards its mark.
God’s word is not some aimless utterance. God’s word is like a javelin that is intentionally aimed to strike at the very centre of who we are so that we are not the same. These words get inside us and begin to shape us.
So God’s words are not dead words, but they are living words, words that can get inside us and transform us. In Psalm 1 we read that the blessed person meditates on God’s Word. The word for meditate is the word “Hagah.” Isaiah uses this word, meditate, for the sounds that a lion makes over its prey (Isaiah 31:4). It’s like a dog that growls over a precious bone, making pleasurable rumbles as he gnaws and savours his prize.
So it is with a person who meditates on the Word of God. They don’t come to his Word with a sense of mere duty, like a student who comes to a textbook preparing for an exam, but they delight in God’s Word like a lion who growls over his prey… like a dog that gnaws on its bone.
3 They are like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
A person who meditates on God’s Word is like a tree that has been fed by a stream of living water.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
A tree is fed by stream…and the sun … in all kinds of ways that are not immediately perceptible to our eye. The stream of water is nourishing the roots. The soil is providing the roots with minerals, The leaves are exposed to the sun which also nourishes the tree, of course, and helps the plant convert the carbon dioxide into organic compounds through the process of photosynthesis.
We of course are nourished by food.
When Laurence Slater, who is now a psychologist in Boston, was 23 years old and just out of undergrad, she struggled with an eating order and weighed just 88 pounds.
“I look away from my bedroom window, go downstairs and out onto the porch. Someone has set a table for me: sliced strawberries lie like the tongues of maidens on a platter, wedges of cheese and bread. I put food in my mouth. For the first time in years, I swallow the softness of ice cream. I want to see if my body will blow up… it doesn’t. Letting down my guard, opening my many mouths, does not bring about the ruin I had feared. On the contrary, food brings vitality back to me. I feel my hair take on its sheen, grow longer, as though new stalks of thought are springing from my brain. My brain, now nourished, thinks in colors instead of calories. I can run harder. My eyes are moist enough to cry.” (This American Life. “Three women…” 53:41).
Eating brings vitality, energy, color that we would not otherwise experience.
And so when we meditate on God’s Word, we are nourished by it.
Before his operation for the cancer that ultimately would take his life, the British pastor, David Watson wrote:
As I spent time, chewing over the endless assurances and promises to be found in the Bible, so my faith in the living God grew stronger and held me safe in his hands. God’s word to us, especially his sword spoken by his Spirit through the Bible, is the very ingredient that feeds our faith. If we feed our souls regularly on God’s word, several times each day, we should become robust spiritually just as we feed on ordinary food several times each day, and become robust physically. Nothing is more important than hearing and obeying the word of God.
St. Benedict coined the term Lectio Divina for sacred reading; that is, a prayerful, meditative reading of Scripture in order to feed on it and be changed by it.
Richard Foster says when we study Scripture we focus on exegesis (or unearthing the meaning of scripture), but in meditation we focus on internalizing and personalizing the passage.
I’ve been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German pastor who helped to lead the underground resistance movement against Hitler. In his book on Mediating on Scripture that was circulated underground during the war, Bonhoeffer says in meditating we don’t analyze the word (there’s a time for that, but in meditation) we simply accept the word as you would from a love one –as Mary did when she was told by the angel that she would conceive and give birth to a son (Meditating on the Word 33).
We might say studying the scripture is like analyzing the recipes in a cook book, but meditation is focus on one recipe, cooking the dish eating and savoring it. In Psalm 24 we read, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” In Psalm 119 we read that God’s word is sweet like a honeycomb.
When we mediate on the Scripture, just one passage or phrase or even word and reflect on it light of other passages of Scripture, in light our own lives and internalize, and prayer over it--we feed and taste its sweetness, as we eat the book, to borrow Eugene Petersen, phrase, we a transformed by it. Bonhoeffer encouraged people to take a brief passage, a phrase or even word in Scripture and mediate on it for at various points the day or even for the whole week. In meditation the goal is not to get through as much of Scripture as possible, but to go deep so that it goes from our head to our heart.
I’ve been in the habit of using an audio Bible to get into the word. I like to rise early. When I get up, I go down stairs over some breakfast--I begin to listen to a selection of Scripture. Then I typically will walk up Queen Elizabeth Park (not far from our home) or go the beach (there’s hardly anyone there early) and listen to the Psalms or a part of the Gospel. If something speaks to me I’ll pause the scripture on my phone, I will replay several times over and pray over it. For examples this I’ve been struck by Psalm 90… It begins with the words:
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
and I hit 30 sec replay button on my phone (use audio clip here—will play three times).
12 Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
I know someone in our community who takes the bus to work. On the bus Richard listens to the podcast Pray as You Go by the Jesuits. www.pray-as-you-go.org
On the bus he meditates on the word. It’s integrated in his life.
Someone this past week has said, my daily time in the word is like water dripping on a rock – slowly over time the rock is impacted by the steady drop of water – it is smoothed out and softened. God’s Word has slowly impacted how I think and live. As I looking back, the influence of the word has beeen profound though not always as noticeable on a daily basis (prop).
Though our experience with the Word will typically not be dramatic or deeply emotionally moving, as we feed on the Word like a tree beside streams of water, we find ourselves nourished and impacted ways that we are not fully conscious of.
Kathleen Norris, favorite author of mine, reports a study which monitored the daily habits of couples in order to determine what produced good and stable marriages. It revealed that only one act made a consistent difference—embracing one another at the beginning and the end of each day. It didn’t seem to matter whether this was done in a passionate or casual way.
Whatever we do repeatedly has the power to shape us, to make a different person.
What shapes you? What do you want to shape you?
This morning, I said we are beginning a new sermon series from the Psalms on Practicing the Presence of God: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer. In the next couple weeks we are going to encourage ourselves, as a community to feed on the Word of God each day… and give you an opportunity commit to this. It is our hope and prayer that the Word of God will lead to the One who said, “I am the Bread of life. Who feeds on me will never go hungry. She who drinks of me will never go thirsty.” It our hope and pray that we together will go deeper with God.
Why become a person who eats on God’s Word each day? Who drinks not only of the streams of the mainstream media, but drinks from the river of God’s Word? Why choose the Road Less Travelled? Because in the end it will make all the difference. It makes us like a tree plant by steams of living water which yields and whose leaf does not wither.
Series: Practice the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalm M1 Sermon Notes: August 22, 2010
Title: Eat This Book
Text: Psalm 1; 34:8; 119:103
BIG IDEA:
Eating the Scriptures sets us on a path to the blessed life.
Sermon Notes:
When Sakiko and I were in England, we rented a car to visit some long-time family friends who lived near Wales and I remember we encountered many roundabout on the way. If you are in England road and you approach a (roundabout—show powerpoint)
Your browser may not support display of this image.
like this with various paths shooting off the circle like spokes in a wheel, one of the paths may have a sign in front of it that reads “North to Edinburgh”; another sign may be marked “West to Cardiff”; another sign may read “East to London.” (use the pointer).
The road you take on the roundabout you choose will determine the direction you take. And the direction you take will determine what you are exposed to. If you stay on the road long enough, your road, in a manner of speaking, will determine the kind of person you will become. You will grow into a different kind of person if your road leads you to settle in a quiet village in the highlands of Scotland. And you will become another kind of person if you settle into an apartment in the centre of London.
Robert Frost, in his famous poem, The Road Not Taken, wrote:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
Took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Psalm 1 describes two paths that diverge. One leads path leads to blessedness. The other leads to destruction.
Psalm 1
1 Blessed are those
who do not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but who delight in the law of the LORD
and meditate on his law day and night.
3 They are like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will be destroyed.
This morning we’re beginning to new series from the Psalms called Practicing the Presence of God: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer. The blessed person is a person as we see in the Psalm who meets God in the Word. The blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—
The wicked or the ones who live as are like chaff. The language reflects the practice of winnowing grain at harvest time. In the ancient Near East threshing floors were on elevated ground, and on the floor was the mixture of straw, stubble, and grain. In the harvest season in the cool breeze of the evening, the farmer would go out and take his pitchfork to this mixture and toss the stubble and grain into the steady breeze. The wind would blow away the lighter chaff and husks, but the more substantial grain would fall to the floor. The Bible says that those who live as if there is not God will eventually be blown away like the chaff.
The Psalmist invites to become people who deeply rooted like beside stream of water… to enter a blessed life.
What it mean to live this blessed life?
The psalm begins with the word “blessed...” Jesus picks up on this term blessed in his famous Sermon on the Mount and uses it eight times… to begin this sermon: blessed, blessed, blessed...
What does blessed mean? There are two words in Hebrew that are translated “blessed” in English: One is the word “baruk” which almost always refers to God blessing someone. The word here in Psalm 1 is a more general term “ashre,” and it is a word that can be used in non-religious contexts. It can mean “happy,” “fortunate,” “lucky.” Eugene Petersen the pastor who translated the Bible into the modern English version, The Message, likes to define the word blessed as “Holy luck.”
The word “blessed” has the idea of being favoured now, but even more favoured in the days to come.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all seek this blessedness, this good fortune, this happiness. Pascal was right: “All people seek happiness. There are no exceptions.”
The psalmist says that the truly blessed person, the truly happy person, the person with holy luck, is the person who does NOT do certain things. There is a negative element in this psalm, and there is a positive element, too. The blessed person does certain things. There’s a negative and a positive part in this Psalm. The Psalmist begins with the negative, i.e. what the blessed person does not do. In our series on the book Judges we had a several messages that have pointed out what not of what not to—including don’t sacrificing his daughter to God as Jephthah did.
In verse 1 the Psalmist says:
1 Blessed are those
who do not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
The blessed man or woman does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. She does not allow the culture or the values promoted by the media to shape their thinking; or to use J. B. Phillips’ phrase “she or he” does let the ungodly squeeze his or her mind into the world’s mold.”
William Deresiewicz last fall spoke to the freshman class at West Point Academy, and he warned them that they would not be able to think deeply about issues if they were constantly being interrupted by Facebook messages, Twitter Tweets, fiddling with their Ipod, watching something on YouTube. He writes: Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now—older people as well as younger people—you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice [or God’s voice].
That’s what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he said, The person who should inspire and lead their race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other people, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.
Henry David Thoreau said, Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.
Dereswiewicz goes on to ask if there is any advantage to reading books over Tweets or Facebook posts. There are two advantages a book has over a Tweet. First, is that the person who wrote the book thought about it a lot more carefully, and, second, the book is old. This is not a disadvantage, but precisely what makes them valuable is that they stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they are not from today.
People of any age tend to be overconfident about what they know. In the Victorian age some people felt that they would bring scientific discovery to an end because they had discover everything there was to know about science. But they were just on verge of a scientific revolution. One day our grandchildren will look back on our time and will wonder how could we have believed ___________.
And part of the great value of Scripture is that it does not reflect the conventional wisdom of our day. We believe that Scripture itself is no ordinary book, but was inspired by God. It contains eternal wisdom and reveals the nature and the character of God to us. That is why Scripture is sometimes referred to as revelation.
Deresiewicz is not saying that it’s categorically wrong to use Facebook, Twitter (someone sent me from Tenth some me this CARTOON), YouTube, surf the Internet, or watch TV. But if we are constantly marinating ourselves in these media, we will find that we are constantly being marinated in other people’s thinking (hmm. I think I’ll have some yogurt and granola now… or The lines are short at Disneyland today. Good time to visit) and the conventional wisdom of our day. We will not be able to think for ourselves.
We will not be able to listen to what the Quakers call the inner light or to the voice of God that we hear in Scripture.
And so the blessed person is the person who says no to certain things, does not allow himself or herself to be continually marinated in the conventional wisdom of the day. They are able to transcend the conventional thinking of their day--how?
By meditating on the Word of God day and night (verse 2).
We read that the blessed does find that reading Scripture a duty, but a delight. The original Hebrew states that the person on the path of the blessed life meditates over the law of God. I know the word “law” can sound negative to us. Perhaps we envision the lawyer’s office filled where the shelves are filled with thick volumes, or a police officer chasing us. The word “law” in the Psalm is the translated from Hebrew word Torah. The word Torah simply means teaching or instruction. Depending on the context, Torah can refer to the first five books of Moses or all of God’s revelation. Torah comes from the root word “yarah” which means “to throw something” (like a javelin) towards its mark.
God’s word is not some aimless utterance. God’s word is like a javelin that is intentionally aimed to strike at the very centre of who we are so that we are not the same. These words get inside us and begin to shape us.
So God’s words are not dead words, but they are living words, words that can get inside us and transform us. In Psalm 1 we read that the blessed person meditates on God’s Word. The word for meditate is the word “Hagah.” Isaiah uses this word, meditate, for the sounds that a lion makes over its prey (Isaiah 31:4). It’s like a dog that growls over a precious bone, making pleasurable rumbles as he gnaws and savours his prize.
So it is with a person who meditates on the Word of God. They don’t come to his Word with a sense of mere duty, like a student who comes to a textbook preparing for an exam, but they delight in God’s Word like a lion who growls over his prey… like a dog that gnaws on its bone.
3 They are like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
A person who meditates on God’s Word is like a tree that has been fed by a stream of living water.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
A tree is fed by stream…and the sun … in all kinds of ways that are not immediately perceptible to our eye. The stream of water is nourishing the roots. The soil is providing the roots with minerals, The leaves are exposed to the sun which also nourishes the tree, of course, and helps the plant convert the carbon dioxide into organic compounds through the process of photosynthesis.
We of course are nourished by food.
When Laurence Slater, who is now a psychologist in Boston, was 23 years old and just out of undergrad, she struggled with an eating order and weighed just 88 pounds.
“I look away from my bedroom window, go downstairs and out onto the porch. Someone has set a table for me: sliced strawberries lie like the tongues of maidens on a platter, wedges of cheese and bread. I put food in my mouth. For the first time in years, I swallow the softness of ice cream. I want to see if my body will blow up… it doesn’t. Letting down my guard, opening my many mouths, does not bring about the ruin I had feared. On the contrary, food brings vitality back to me. I feel my hair take on its sheen, grow longer, as though new stalks of thought are springing from my brain. My brain, now nourished, thinks in colors instead of calories. I can run harder. My eyes are moist enough to cry.” (This American Life. “Three women…” 53:41).
Eating brings vitality, energy, color that we would not otherwise experience.
And so when we meditate on God’s Word, we are nourished by it.
Before his operation for the cancer that ultimately would take his life, the British pastor, David Watson wrote:
As I spent time, chewing over the endless assurances and promises to be found in the Bible, so my faith in the living God grew stronger and held me safe in his hands. God’s word to us, especially his sword spoken by his Spirit through the Bible, is the very ingredient that feeds our faith. If we feed our souls regularly on God’s word, several times each day, we should become robust spiritually just as we feed on ordinary food several times each day, and become robust physically. Nothing is more important than hearing and obeying the word of God.
St. Benedict coined the term Lectio Divina for sacred reading; that is, a prayerful, meditative reading of Scripture in order to feed on it and be changed by it.
Richard Foster says when we study Scripture we focus on exegesis (or unearthing the meaning of scripture), but in meditation we focus on internalizing and personalizing the passage.
I’ve been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German pastor who helped to lead the underground resistance movement against Hitler. In his book on Mediating on Scripture that was circulated underground during the war, Bonhoeffer says in meditating we don’t analyze the word (there’s a time for that, but in meditation) we simply accept the word as you would from a love one –as Mary did when she was told by the angel that she would conceive and give birth to a son (Meditating on the Word 33).
We might say studying the scripture is like analyzing the recipes in a cook book, but meditation is focus on one recipe, cooking the dish eating and savoring it. In Psalm 24 we read, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” In Psalm 119 we read that God’s word is sweet like a honeycomb.
When we mediate on the Scripture, just one passage or phrase or even word and reflect on it light of other passages of Scripture, in light our own lives and internalize, and prayer over it--we feed and taste its sweetness, as we eat the book, to borrow Eugene Petersen, phrase, we a transformed by it. Bonhoeffer encouraged people to take a brief passage, a phrase or even word in Scripture and mediate on it for at various points the day or even for the whole week. In meditation the goal is not to get through as much of Scripture as possible, but to go deep so that it goes from our head to our heart.
I’ve been in the habit of using an audio Bible to get into the word. I like to rise early. When I get up, I go down stairs over some breakfast--I begin to listen to a selection of Scripture. Then I typically will walk up Queen Elizabeth Park (not far from our home) or go the beach (there’s hardly anyone there early) and listen to the Psalms or a part of the Gospel. If something speaks to me I’ll pause the scripture on my phone, I will replay several times over and pray over it. For examples this I’ve been struck by Psalm 90… It begins with the words:
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
and I hit 30 sec replay button on my phone (use audio clip here—will play three times).
12 Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
I know someone in our community who takes the bus to work. On the bus Richard listens to the podcast Pray as You Go by the Jesuits. www.pray-as-you-go.org
On the bus he meditates on the word. It’s integrated in his life.
Someone this past week has said, my daily time in the word is like water dripping on a rock – slowly over time the rock is impacted by the steady drop of water – it is smoothed out and softened. God’s Word has slowly impacted how I think and live. As I looking back, the influence of the word has beeen profound though not always as noticeable on a daily basis (prop).
Though our experience with the Word will typically not be dramatic or deeply emotionally moving, as we feed on the Word like a tree beside streams of water, we find ourselves nourished and impacted ways that we are not fully conscious of.
Kathleen Norris, favorite author of mine, reports a study which monitored the daily habits of couples in order to determine what produced good and stable marriages. It revealed that only one act made a consistent difference—embracing one another at the beginning and the end of each day. It didn’t seem to matter whether this was done in a passionate or casual way.
Whatever we do repeatedly has the power to shape us, to make a different person.
What shapes you? What do you want to shape you?
This morning, I said we are beginning a new sermon series from the Psalms on Practicing the Presence of God: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer. In the next couple weeks we are going to encourage ourselves, as a community to feed on the Word of God each day… and give you an opportunity commit to this. It is our hope and prayer that the Word of God will lead to the One who said, “I am the Bread of life. Who feeds on me will never go hungry. She who drinks of me will never go thirsty.” It our hope and pray that we together will go deeper with God.
Why become a person who eats on God’s Word each day? Who drinks not only of the streams of the mainstream media, but drinks from the river of God’s Word? Why choose the Road Less Travelled? Because in the end it will make all the difference. It makes us like a tree plant by steams of living water which yields and whose leaf does not wither.
posted by Shigematsu at 7:39 PM
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