Journal Exerpt #1

For about a month and a half I've been keeping a journal. Its good because it keeps me writing, but it means I feel less of a need to blog. My goal is really to take what I like from my journal and put it on my blog but I haven't done much of that yet. Here goes:

Thoughts on meditating on the Word:

Meditate on the Word? How do I even do that? "It is possible to read quickly, but it is not possible to understand quickly." But I often feel that I understand a text as quickly as I have read it. I have read these texts over and over and over since I was a child, and any reading brings to mind a host of interpretations I have heard and accepted.

My notion of understanding is too small. It generally breaks down to being able to paraphrase someone else's thoughts. I am not practiced at meditating on texts. So what do I do?

Do I just sit and think about it? I honestly have a hard time understanding how people can have had consistent daily bible study for years and years because I am satisfied by pithy observations and insights that don't take me very long to come up with, though they may well represent more time invested by people who are not as gifted in that mental area. Either way, that can't be what meditating on the Word is about. I must not settle for what fruit my intellect can bear. I must not settle for anything that comes so easily and does not change what I do.

What I call conviction is such a light thing, almost weightless. It generally changes only what I say. Changing what I say is good and necessary, bu there is so much more. This book about God interacting with man has given so much more to people throughout history. I want what David had. I want to taste the Word, I want to know the joy that comes from prolonged and concentrated meditation on the words God has given us. The kind of joy that inspired poetry like Psalm 119.

I need a new way of reading books. I need a new way of understanding and believing that involves my whole self, including my body and not just my mind and my mouth. I need an end to fragmentation. I need wholeness that I can only find in Christ.