Week #13 – Meditation

Invocation:
My Father of infinite love, enter and fill me and take control of every area of my life. Let my mind be as transparent as a window for letting Your truth shine through me. Let my heart be as the widow’s cruse, ever brimming over with Your compassion for men. Let the threads of my life be interwoven with the tapestry of Your eternal purposes. For Yours is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Weekly Scripture Reading: Psalm 27

Daily Scripture Reading:

Monday Ecclesiastes 12:1-7
Tuesday Colossians 4:4-9
Wednesday Luke 16:19-31
Thursday Deuteronomy 10:12-22
Friday Psalm 119:97-104
Saturday Joshua 1:1-9
Sunday Luke 20:41-47

Selections For Meditation

Personal Meditation

Prayer:
Ask God this week to help you to keep your mind fixed on His greatness and wonder. Begin in your devotional times and practice such meditation with short affirmations woven into the fabric of your everyday life.

Hymn: “O Thou in Whose Presence”

O Thou in whose presence;
my soul takes delight,
On whom in affliction I call,
My comfort by day and my song in the night,
My hope, my salvation, my all.

Where dost Thou, resort with Thy sheep,
To feed them in pastures of love?
Say, why in the valley of death should I weep,
Or alone in this wilderness rove?

He looks, and ten thousands of angels rejoice,
And myriads wait for His word.
He speaks, and eternity, filled with His voice,
Re-echoes the praise of the Lord.

Dear Shepherd! I hear and will follow Thy call;
I know the sweet sound of Thy voice.
Restore and defend me, for Thou art my all,
And in Thee I will ever rejoice.
-Joseph Swain-

Benediction:
May the strength of God pilot me. May the power of God preserve me. May the wisdom of God instruct me. May the hand of God protect me. May the way of God direct me. May the shield of God defend me. Amen.

Selections for Meditation:

* Listening means being released from willfulness, arrogance, and self-assertiveness. It calls for respectful presence to the mystery we are meditating, for humble openness to its meaning. Such listening or apprehending is prior to our appraisal of these meanings and our decision to incorporate them into our spiritual development, should God give us the grace for this growth . . . . Listening is only possible to the degree that we let go of the grip of our egotistic will and become inwardly and outwardly silent, alert, receptive, attentive. Then we may be able to think clearly or meditate; it becomes possible to reflect on our lives as a whole or on a text we are reading. What we hear sinks from our minds into our hearts. Ideas are not exploited to serve our purposes but to direct us to deeper wisdom, to a revelation of persons, events, and things as they are in themselves. We become the servants rather than the masters of the word.
-From Pathways of Spiritual Living by
Susan Annette Muto-

* We have some idea, perhaps, what prayer is, but what is meditation? Well may we ask; for meditation is a lost art today, and Christian people suffer grievously from their ignorance of the practice. Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God; as a means of communion with God. It’s purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God’s power and grace. Its effect is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory, and our own littleness and sinfulness and to encourage and reassure us — “comfort” us, in the old, strong, Bible sense of the word — as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ . . . . As we enter more and more deeply into this experience of being humbled and exalted, our knowledge of God increases, and with it our peace, our strength, and our joy.
-From Knowing God by J. I. Packer-

* The creation of a framework, an atmosphere, a structure, is not prayer, but it is a necessary preliminary to prayer. It is within the atmosphere of inner discipline and simplicity that prayer can begin to grow. The eastern church, in its teaching on prayer, focuses on the constant use of the Name of Jesus. The first recorded teaching about the invocation of the Name of Jesus comes in the mid-fifth century writer Diadochus. He recommended the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me” as a way of cleansing the mind of its sickness, and he recommended this to beginners. The Prayer of Jesus was to be used inwardly and secretly at all times — when dropping off to sleep, when waking, when eating or drinking, while talking. It is seen as a prayer which both binds the mind and unifies the personality. Thus Philotheus of Sinai in. The 10th century says: “By the memory of Jesus Christ gather together your mind that is scattered abroad. Through the Fall this disintegration has happened, but memory of God restores primal wholeness.”
One of the essential aspects of the use of the Name of Jesus then is the “binding of the mind.” This is an expression used by the 19th century eastern spiritual teacher Theophan the Recluse. He advises his disciples to “bind the mind with one thought — or the thought of One only.” It is this process of binding which is the purpose of meditation. What is meant by meditation? In Christian spirituality, the term “meditation” has generally been used to describe a way of disciplined thinking, an ascetic also exercise marked by discipline and sobriety. It involves pursuing one line of thought and renouncing all others. It is therefore a method of reducing the range of activity of the mind, allowing it to center on one point, to focus.
-From True Prayer by Kenneth Leech-

* Today we will have a primer talk. What is confusing to you I imagine is that you have not quite understood what takes place when you have a new thought, a sun-thought, in the galaxy which makes your identity, especially such powerful ones as you have been given. You do not take, as it were, a new concept in your hands, place it in the midst of the familiar galaxy and expect a sudden radiance, an immediate change, although I do not forget that instant revelation and realization have come to some of the great ones who have walked this way. No, like all good things this work begins humbly. It is like planting a seed that grows and grows for a time in the dark. Ideas that have been given to you in these communions are in movement and as they grow larger and larger they push out into oblivion the older ideas which were foolish and out of proportion. This is difficult to put into words, but it may help you not to be too introspective.
When you meditate or abide in your quiet times of communion, you do not charge in and do something, like saying, “I will now be good and move mountains by my act of faith.” No, you water your garden, knowing that these ideas are growing into a heavenly garden; the indwelling spirit does the work, not you: you merely water it. Do you not see the comfort there is in that? I can tell you in primer language that a very gentle, calm, unemotional, selfless, and patient attitude toward your spiritual growth is essential — such as all old gardeners know. They know that patience, hoeing, watering, and a certain order, a quiet rhythm, bring to birth a heavenly beauty.
-From Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood
Edited by Mary Strong-

* Living things need an appropriate climate in order to grow and bear fruit. If they are to develop to completion, they require an environment that allows their potential to be realized. The seed will not grow unless there is a soil that can feed it, light to draw it forth, warmth to nurture and moisture that unlocks its vitality. Time is also required for its growth to unfold.
Meditation is the attempt to provide the soul with the proper environment in which to grow and become. In the lives of people like St. Francis or St. Catherine of Genoa one gets a glimpse of what the soul is able to become. Often this is seen as the result of heroic action lying beyond the possibility of ordinary people. The flowering of the human soul, however, is more a matter of the proper psychological and spiritual environment than of particular gifts or disposition or heroism. How seldom we wonder at the growth of the great redwood from a tiny seed dropped at random on the littered floor of the forest. From one seed is grown enough wood to frame several hundred houses. The human soul has seed potential like this if it has the right environment. Remember that only in a few mountain valleys were the conditions right for the Sequoia gigantia, the mighty redwood, to grow.
For both the seed and the soul, these things all take time. In both cases there is need for patience. Most of us know enough not to poke at the seed to see if it is sprouting, or to try to hurry it along with too much water or fertilizer or cultivation. The same respect must be shown for the soul as its growth starts to take place. Growth can seldom be forced in nature. Whether it is producing a tree or a human personality, nature unfolds its growth slowly, silently.
Where meditation is concerned, we need to realize two things. Meditation is simple and natural, like a seed growing and becoming a tree. At the same time it requires the right conditions, conditions not provided by the secular world today. If meditation is to touch reality, we must seek out the right climate.
-From The Other Side of Silence
by Morton T. Kelsey-

* Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake. It is not really a paradox that it is precisely in meditation that most aspirants for religious perfection grow dull and fall asleep. Meditative prayer is a stern discipline, and one which cannot be learned by violence. It requires unending courage and perseverance, and those who are not willing to work at it patiently will finally end in compromise. Here, as elsewhere, compromise is only another name for failure.
To meditate is to think. And yet successful meditation is much more than reasoning or thinking. It is much more than “affections,” much more than a series of prepared “acts” which one goes through.
In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being. Prayer is then not just a formula of words, or a series of desires springing up in the heart — it is the orientation of our whole body, mind and spirit to God in silence, attention, and adoration. All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.
-From Thoughts in Solitude by
Thomas Merton-