Thou Shalt Meditate Therein

Joshua 1:8-9

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

 

To some, the Bible is interesting as an example of world literature or morally educational like a mythological fairytale – but it is not sacred.  Even as professed Christians, we can merely read the Bible, our eyes skimming over the surface print words, paying Scripture a kind of civil service with no engaging respect, no investment of self – no reverence for the sacred.  Any treatment of the Bible in these ways – as literature, mythology, or textbook – is an ideal way to get lost.  We will become blind, ridiculous, or wearily dry, unless we truly engage in the Bible by lovingly holding the Bible in its entirety as sacred.  It is not enough to memorize, recite, or enforce the laws therein, we must hold sacred Scripture as sacred, living and breathing the life of God through the forms of human beings, the earthen vessels of human words becoming sacred themselves by being touched by the living water, fire, of the Divine.

 

I’m afraid that I don’t hold the Bible as truly sacred.  I am not eager to delve within its pages, to explore every corner and curve.  I will let the divinely inspired words into my ears or eyes and into my mind, but, too often, I agitate them around in my mind, trying to wring something out of them with my own spin – and I don’t let them into my heart.  It isn’t that I close my heart to them, but rather that my mind keeps them so busy that they don’t have a chance to drip down and touch, with liquid fire, the core of my soul.  I need to not only open my ears and my eyes, but also to open the door of my mind wide so that I may stand aside and let the Word of God fully enter, with Divinity’s own timing, while I receive, in stillness and silence, deeply, deeply into my heart of hearts.  To meditate in wonder rather than in wording, to spread out in the sacred abode in which God and I dwell alone and bask in His voicing… then I am truly nourished by the Word of God, watered and fed and lit up from within, and I grow healthy and strong in the Word, blossoming forth and stepping into biblical reality, naked and unafraid.

 

Thanks be to God.

Christina Chase