Meditating on Scripture

The poet, T.S. Eliot, once observed: “Everything we eat has some effect upon us. It affects us during the process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe exactly the same is true of anything we read.”

In other words, you are what you read. So reading without meditating is like eating without digesting. If you want to absorb the nutrients, you can’t just read scripture, you have to chew on it. You have to digest it. Meditation is the way we metabolize Scripture.

Are you metabolizing Scripture? I have to slow myself down, focus on my reading to meditate on what I am reading. This week I talked with someone about generating an appetite for God. I told them the main means by which God does that in our lives is the Bible, his word. But we cannot not just mindlessly read it and expect to be fed and nourished spiritually. We must think about what we are reading - engage with what the author is saying by what he wrote and what he means by what he wrote and then how that applies to me. That takes work! We can rake the ground for leaves or we can dig for gold. Digging take more effort but is more rewarding. We will never find gold raking for leaves.