Meditation


"God walks everywhere incognito." (C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer)

It can be a great comfort to know that God walks among us all the time. Unfortunately, we don't always seem to be able to see God at work in and around us all the time. While there are many practices which help us open our eyes to God in the world, one of the best practices is Christian meditation.

Many people feel that meditation is a practice of Eastern or New Age religions and not Christianity. However, Christianity has a long and deep tradition of meditation, especially in monastic traditions. Christian meditation is not simply about emptying the mind, but connecting to the mind of God and being open to God's presence.

Practices of meditation range from meditating on a verse of scripture, repeating it in the mind to allow it to settle and for you to see it with new eyes or heart. Or perhaps meditation by looking deeply at an image, an icon or a cross, and letting the image open itself up to you. Another way of meditating is my sitting in nature or a prayer or some other reflection. Meditation is a practice of opening yourself up, letting go of preconceived notions, and letting whatever you are meditating on speak to you. What speaks to you this week?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nicodemus's Questions

31 May 2015 O God of infinite possibilities, you have revealed yourself in so many ways. Help us to see you in your work of recreating the world in love, justice, and peace, through your Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I love to ask questions. When I went to college my father looked at me and said, “I’m so glad I can finally pay someone else to answer all your questions.” Apparently I asked him a few too many questions as a kid. We all know those children, the little ones that wander around asking why every time you say something. After only a little while, How? And Why? Become the worst two words in the history of the English language.  Some questions come about simply through curiosity. We want to know how or why something is the way it is. Some are simply practical. What time should we meet? Where would you like to meet? What do you need from the store? Some are more culturally or politically influenced. Since moving to Texas, the rate at which I have been ra
Read more

God is here for you

 When I think of lights shining in the darkness that cannot be overcome, I always think of starlight. Stars are huge burning balls of gaseous mixtures light-years away from us. What we see is history written large in the night sky and those stars are not overcome by the surrounding darkness of space they continue to burn and blaze in relationship with the darkness. The light of the stars unfortunately is hard to see these days because of light pollution. With so many outdoor lights - and extremely bright ones with new LED lights and plane lights up in the sky It means its no longer easy to see starlight to know the true starlight from all the rest of the light Being able to see the swath of the Milky Way is gone in so many places. We have seemingly disconnected ourselves from the rest of the galaxy with too much light we drown out the starlight. All too often we do this in many other ways in our lives. We listen to so many voices, our families and friends, the newscasters, our favorite
Read more

Proper 23 Life is a Story

Living the Story "Life is a story. You can choose your story. A story with God is the better story." At least this is what Life of Pi author Yann Martel once said, in talking about his novel.  A story. Life is a story.  I think most of us would agree with this statement.  We understand our lives in stories.  The story of what has happened today, or this week.  The stories from our pasts. Though some of us are still probably working on believing that  we can choose our own stories.  We may not be able to change the past, but we can change the present and the future and thus change our stories, especially how they end.  A story with God is the best story. Here we all sit in church,  interacting in our stories with God, but there are hundreds of people who are missing out on this part of their story. Lots of people don't have God in their stories. They are sadly missing out. But we can help change their stories to
Read more