Meditating on the Lord’s word day and night
by Pastor Joshua Pfeiffer
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Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked … but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night (Psalm 1:1a,2).
If you’re reading these LCA Daily Devotions, you’re likely in reasonable habits of meditating on the Lord’s word day and night. Or perhaps not? Maybe like me, you’re tempted to skip over the actual key Bible verse and the longer text linked below it. Instead, you think about the author of the devotion and where they might be from, and then superficially scan the reflection to check whether they’ve come up with anything particularly interesting or memorable for today. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner! Of course, the tradition of devotional reflections is designed to aid our meditation on the Lord’s word, which is always the deepest source of spiritual nourishment.
Psalm 1 is the classic expression of this. It says the trap is to listen only to the advice of those who don’t know God (‘the wicked’) and those who scoff at his ways. There certainly is plenty of scoffing at God, faith and religion in our day, isn’t there? We might hear these words from family, friends, coworkers or on the news. They do tend to get in our heads and hearts and can roll around there in times of solitude. That’s meditation. It’s just not a helpful form of it. In fact, the psalm says it’s a spiritually dead-end road with no fruit for life.
Instead, we are happy and blessed in listening to the Lord’s word day and night. His word is like an invisible underground source of life from which we draw vitality and strength. As fruit trees grow well by streams and bear much fruit, so we are enlivened and made fruitful as our roots go deep into the Lord’s word. Having said that, we remember too that the fruit always comes in its season, so sometimes patience is required to see what is promised.
Meditation is very popular in our day. We Christians have our own long tradition of meditation. For us, the distinguishing factor, though, is not in the method but in the object. Christian meditation isn’t so much a matter of how, but of what, or even better, who.
Heavenly Father, thank you for your word and the way you nourish me through it in this life. Help me listen to you and delight in what you say to me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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