By meditating on the Word, we are orienting our hearts to heavenly glories and eternal truths. We are willingly subjecting our fickle selves to what stabilizes and roots us. Meditation is our unhurried pursuit of knowing God through what God has said. Let us, then, delight in the Word through meditation on the Word.
Nobody wants to have stale devotional times in the Scripture. So let me tell you a secret that’s not really a well-kept secret at all (and nor should it be). If you want your heart to be stirred with delight in the Word, meditate on the Word.
Meditate sounds strange to some ears, because the Eastern practice of meditation involves emptying your mind. That’s not what I mean, and that’s not what the Bible means, by the term “meditate.”
In Psalm 1:2, the blessed man’s delight is in the Torah, and on God’s law “he meditates day and night.” The verb doesn’t mean trying not to think. It’s to deliberately think about what one reads. It’s to ponder, to mull over.
Sometimes you may wake up ready to read the Scripture because delight has led you there. But other times (even most times?) you come to the Scripture by discipline in search of delight. As we reflect on what God has said in his Word, our souls are being nourished by the truth and wisdom of God.
Meditation requires us to slow down. We live in a hurried age, a busy cultural atmosphere. But a hurried and hectic life will not cultivate a healthy spiritual life. Attention spans are undermined by a TikTok way of thinking. The role of the Word in our lives is not meant to be sporadic, occasional, or peripheral.
The blessed man in Psalm 1 meditates “day and night” (v. 2), which highlights the occupying role that the Word has in his mind and life. Meditation requires sustained attention, and sustained attention requires time.
