Meditation: Communion With Living Words!

Meditation is not an optional spiritual discipline; it is an absolute requirement for knowing God. It is the way we, according Eugene Peterson, are moved from "looking at the words of the text to entering the world of the text. As we take this text into ourselves, we find that the text is taking us into itself" (Eat This Book, p. 99). Peterson pointed out that it was Plato who "made the astute observation that writing was going to debilitate memory." He then quotes Ivan Illich who states that "Plato observed how his students' reliance on silent, passive texts [i.e., books] narrowed the stream of their remembrance, making it shallow and dull." 

Then Peterson asserts:

When words were primarily exchanged by means of voices and ears, language was living and kept alive in acts of speaking and listening. But the moment that words were written, memory was bound to atrophy--we would no longer have to remember what was said; we could look it up in a book" (p. 98).  

In other words, if we could satisfy ourselves that we knew where the words could be found (if we needed them), then we could forget them and come back to them later. Of course, we may never get back to them, so the words would have little if any effect upon us. 

Why is this so important for us? Peterson tells us:

For the world of the text is far larger and more real than our minds and experience. The biblical text is a witness to God revealing himself. This revelation is not simply a series of random oracles that illuminate momentary obscurities or guide us through perplexing circumstances. This text is God-revealing: God creating, God saving, God blessing. The text has a context and the context is huge, massive, comprehensive. St. Paul is staggered by it: O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Rom. 11:33). 

Thus, meditation prevents our knowledge of God from being reduced to ink on a page, and moves it into the holy realm of a love letter written on our hearts. We come to know him not pedantically, but rather by communing with him along an Emmaus-like path where Bible words burn Jesus' presence into our affections. And we're never the same again!

Yes, meditation is calculated to encourage this kind of intimacy. We MUST have it!