Meditating on the Bible

I have read much in the Bible about meditating on God’s word. Remember. . . "Basic Youth Conflicts?” I can’t remember the guy’s name that used to do those seminars, but I remember something I read one time and I think he was the author. He wrote about meditating on scripture. He said that to meditate on the scripture, you need to memorize it; he emphasized that memorization does not equal meditation, but that it’s hard to have one without the other. I have found that to be true: if you want to memorize scripture, the process demands meditation, and if you meditate on scripture, you memorize it even if that was not your intent.

And then, in some course that I prepared to teach at the Bible College—it must have been a Global University course, because nearly all our courses are G.U. courses. In preparing to teach that course, I read that the Hebrew word that’s translated “meditate” has as it’s basic meaning something like “to mutter under your breath.” To mutter, to mumble, to meditate, to recite in a whisper. . .that’s what I do as I meditate on the Psalms, in an effort to memorize. I memorize so that I might meditate, and I meditate so that I might memorize.

I started memorizing consistently only about 4 years ago, though my first feats of memory came decades ago, when I was a Bible college student myself. As I memorized the book of Hebrews, I discovered that it had meaning as a whole, as an entity in itself, as a book and not just as a hodge-podge of verses. I’ve always been an avid reader, since first grade, but I could never read the Bible with the same enthusiasm as I read a novel. That’s because at each verse, I started over; like Abraham Lincoln’s description of reading the dictionary, I found it very interesting, but the plot was a bit hard to follow. I thought to find in each single verse a whole universe of meaning, instead of connecting each sentence, each paragraph, each argument, into a unified discourse.

I memorized Hebrews from beginning to end, but I determined to memorize the Psalms from the end to the beginning. I started with Psalm 4 and memorized the last verse first: “I will lie down and sleep in peace, oh Lord, for you alone make me dwell in safety.” (If my memory serves me well.) Then the next day I memorized the next-to-the-last verse and strung it together with the last one: “You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, oh Lord, make me dwell in safety.” And I mutter it under my breath, because I have found that when I merely form the words in my mind, my errant mind tends to wander and I don’t even notice. If my lips stop moving, sooner or later I notice and force them to start up again.

I mutter, I meditate, not so that I can recite God’s Word for an audience, but so that I can live God’s Word for His honor and glory. Meditation soothes the anxious mind and brings serenity to a frazzled life. God is good.