Day 2: Meditate

Every year, people read fewer and fewer books and spend more and more time on their devices. A number of social critics are calling our generation “post-literate.”

But the truth is: we actually read more than ever before in human history. We just don’t read books. We read text messages and emails and social media captions and news alerts and billboards.

But this new kind of fast-paced, clickbait-y reading is literally rewiring our brains. It’s making it harder to read anything literary, or slow, or complex. Our brains have been neurobiologically malformed to read in a way that is fundamentally at odds with how Scripture was designed to be read.

You’re thinking, “Scripture was designed to be read in a certain way?”

Yes.

Let me show you two key passages that biblical scholars call “canonical seams” because they are the literary transitions between the three sections of the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament). And the canonical seams show us how we are to read the library as a whole.

They are Joshua 1 and Psalm 1.

First, turn to Joshua 1.

This passage is the seam, or link, between the Law (or the Torah) and the Prophets.

“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1v7-8)

Now turn to Psalm 1.

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither — whatever they do prospers.” (Psalm 1v1-3)

Did you see it? The word used in both passages is “meditation.”

In Hebrew, the word is hagah. It most literally means “to murmur.” But hagah can also be translated as “to growl over.” The word is later used by the prophet Isaiah, who writes, “A lion growls [hagah], a great lion over its prey.”

Think of a lion and its prey; it’s very similar to a dog and its bone. I just gave our dog a bone a few days ago. She has been chewing on it, gnawing it down, reveling in it. In meditation, we do that with Scripture. We hagah it — we chew on it and get to the marrow of it. It doesn’t quickly give up its meaning. You have to meditate. You have to ponder it.

But this is hard to do in our fast-paced world. Again, we’ve been formed to read quickly. To skim the page and get what we need and move on. We often read Scripture at breakneck speed, and in doing so, we miss out on all that God has for us in it.

Which is why the first step for many of us in our practice of reading Scripture is to slow down and meditate.

There is no one way to meditate on Scripture. But there is one practice that has risen to the surface over the centuries. It’s called Lectio Divina. Lectio means “reading,” and Divina means “divine” or “spiritual.”

In the 12th century, it was codified into a four-step process: Lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio. Or: read, meditate, pray, contemplate.

First, you read (lectio) slowly. Often, what will happen is a particular word or phrase will catch your mind’s attention or nudge you emotionally.

Then the next step is you meditate (meditatio): You “chew” on it. You re-read it a second or third time, and reflect on the connections between the passage and your life and what God may be saying to you.

Then we pray (oratio) what we are hearing back to God.

And finally, we contemplate (contemplatio), meaning we look up from the text into the eyes of God himself. And we gaze upon him, gazing upon us in love.

Many teachers add a fifth step: incarnatio, or incarnation. You put flesh and blood on the passage. You translate the Bible into your life.

Joshua writes, “Be careful to obey all the Law... meditate on it ... so that you may be careful to do everything written in it ...”

It’s not enough to just meditate on the Bible. You have to get it out of your head and even your heart, and into your hands and feet.

And if this sounds arduous or serious, did you notice? The word used in Psalm 1 for the ideal emotional disposition towards Scripture is delight.

That’s what reading Scripture can become like for you. It may start out as an acquired taste. It may be hard at first to slow down and focus. But as you retrain your brain to eat Scripture — to meditate — there is joy waiting for you on every page.