We live in stirring days, when deeds are everything when closet work is often neglected for active business, and little time is given to meditation. Yet, with more thought and prayer wholesome activity would be greater in the end, and all our actions more successful. Time is not lost, which is spent in meditation, in searching wisdom's ways, and seeking out profound realities. There is one who often meditate and yet accomplishes much. There is another who hastens and yet does little.
None works so heartily, nor reaps so fully as he whose wits are sharpened by prayer and meditation.
Reading either Scripture or Christian books, apart from meditation, does little good. It is much the same as not digesting what you eat, this only starves the soul. How many read the Bible thus!
The art of meditation may be learned by dint of effort.
You say, "I am quite unused to meditate. How shall I begin?" Deal gently with yourself at first. Select your subject, some passage from the Word. Then fix the time you choose to give; say, five minutes at a time. Begin, and think aloud. This makes it easier, and saves the mind from distracted thoughts, the hardest task of all. The sound even of your own voice will help you; it is like speaking to a friend. And what is meditation, but communing with self, that self may be a constant hearer.
But, more than all, make it a time of prayer of communing with God. This helps the matter greatly. Take the words of Scripture, and ask Jesus what they mean. In doing this, the mind is exercised. A glow of thought attends the effort. You honor Jesus; and He will honor you, by pouring out a largeness of capacity, a quicker mind. The interchange of thought between you and Jesus goes on apace, and you are surprised to find how long the exercise has lasted.
Thus meditation grows, the more it is exercised. It feeds the soul,
expands the mind,
increases thought, and,
best of all, it brings you into fellowship with Jesus. This is the very life and soul of meditation.
[George Mylne]
✞ ✞ ✞
Ecclesiastes 7:25 ... I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness:
Joshua 1:8 ... his 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.
Psalm 1:2 ... But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
Psalm 77:12 ... I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.❤
