While those into meditating claim its practices are ancient, they do not go back far enough. God is the one who declared that meditating on His Word was what would make us successful in all the ways that count for this life and eternity!
But God's meditating is not to EMPTY our mind, but rather to FILL it.
Satan is clever in taking what is God's and twisting it or turning it backwards for his own deception.
God's purpose of meditating is to embed His Word into our hearts and minds and magnify our understanding of it. He gave us our imaginations to make meditating a wonderfully visual experience.
Let me share my morning 'meditation' on a familiar passage of scripture - Jesus' own words, from Luke 11:33-36. It is the passage that speaks about the 'eye being the lamp of the body', and the body being filled with 'good' or 'bad'.
"The lamp of the body is the eye.
Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light.
But when your eye is bad your body also is full of darkness."
A 'lamp'. No one reaches for a lamp in the brightness of the noon day sun. A lamp is useful only in darkness . The light of a lamp reveals what is within the reach of its beam.
I imagined a street that lay in the darkness of a moonless night.
I saw in my imagination that two women were making their way down the street, each carrying a lamp to light their way.
One swung her lamp to the left side of the street. Her lamp revealed a garbage dump full of waste - a mess of the discarded remains of what was perhaps at one time useful to someone.
The other woman swung her lamp to the right side of the street to reveal a park-like setting with, benches, trees, flowers and a market displaying tables of fresh fruit and vegetables , from the bountiful harvest of surrounding farms.
I watch and realize that the two women each carry a basket. The two women move to opposite sides of the street and begin filling their baskets from what they find, one from the left side of the street and one from the right. They then carry their baskets home and fill their cupboards with the contents.
Later that day, I receive an invitation from first one woman , then the other, to come join her for dinner that night.
Which invitation do you think I will accept ?
Why did God use the analogy of a lamp to describe our 'eyes' ?
We would walk in darkness if we had no eyes. It is our eyes that allow us to 'see' what is around us. Our eyes open to us the world we live in. We see destruction, we see evil, we see war and hate, but we also see beauty and love and peace and harmony.
Our eyes 'see' what we direct them to see. What they have gathered is stored into the 'cupboards' of our mind and heart and soul.
Then when we invite people into our life -- we 'share' with them from what we have gathered -
"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of this heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." Luke 6:45
What we focus on we gather. What we gather is what we store. And what we store determines who we become, and what we have in our 'cupboards' to share with others.
As we go through our day, we direct our eyes to the 'left' or to the 'right'. What will we focus on? What will we gather to put into our 'storehouse' - our heart and mind ? Will it be the good things of truth and righteousness and love - the things that are of the Kingdom of God - or -- will we gather the things that corrupt, that destroy , that fill our mind with unworthy thoughts , that stir in us a lust for things that do not edify, things that entice us embrace the world and make us vulnerable to the temptations and deception of the enemy?
Remember, you put in your basket what your eyes focus on throughout your day, and the contents of your basket cannot be simply dumped out when the day's journey is over, but will be brought 'home to be stored in the cupboard of your heart'..
Do you need to clean out your cupboards today ? Remove by God's forgiveness the things that destroy and corrupt ?
Do you need to change some habits ... pay more attention to what you put in your 'basket' ?
Then, with His grace, focus on those things that fall into the list of Philippians 4:8 ... :"Finally brethren, whatsoever things ........."
1 comment:
Julie, this is beautiful and so, so important.
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