Spiritual Meditation

I know my chapter was 17, but 16 kept calling to me, so I stole it.

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Psalm 16
1 Protect me, God, for I take refuge in you.
2 I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have nothing good besides you.”
3 As for the holy people who are in the land,
they are the noble ones.
All my delight is in them.
4 The sorrows of those who take another god
for themselves will multiply;
I will not pour out their drink offerings of blood,
and I will not speak their names with my lips.
5 Lord, you are my portion
and my cup of blessing;
you hold my future.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me
in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
7 I will bless the Lord who counsels me—
even at night when my thoughts trouble me.
8 I always let the Lord guide me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad
and my whole being rejoices;
my body also rests securely.
10 For you will not abandon me to Sheol;
you will not allow your faithful one to see decay.
11 You reveal the path of life to me;
in your presence is abundant joy;
at your right hand are eternal pleasures.

The word “meditation” used to freak me out. I knew the Bible used it, as in, “I meditate on your word day and night,” but mostly it held a weird, Eastern mysticism, chakras and auras kind of vibe for me. That didn’t exactly jive with this word’s use in the Bible, so I just sort of ignored it.

Until recently. I very gingerly decided to give mindfulness a try (which definitely can blur the line into meditation but is in fact its own thing entirely). It was a pretty stressful season at work, and I figured the breathing exercises might be calming for me. I headed down the youtube rabbit hole, testing out guided breathing videos that steered clear of any religious connotation.

I found some decent ones, but my true jackpot discovery were some scriptural meditation channels that guide you through actually meditating on passages of Scripture.

I was so skeptical, but it turns out that sitting quietly, blocking out distractions, breathing deeply, and hearing God’s Word spoken over you (and speaking it over yourself) is pretty powerful….which is probably why God instructs us to do it in the first place.

All of that leads me to this: Psalm 16 is a great meditation psalm. Just while reading through it, I found myself repeating and meditating on various lines, letting their truth just sit in my heart for a moment.

He is our Refuge. Our portion. Our blessing. The only Holder of our future. Our counselor. Our comfort. Our guide and our bedrock. Our abundant joy. If those things are not worth meditating over, then nothing is (I know, that sentence was structurally terrible. But it’s also true).

The form and practice of scripture meditation will look different for everyone. But I would challenge you to give it a try. Find what works for you (write it out, sit cross-legged with your eyes closed, sing it, read it out loud, whatever), but let the truths in this Psalm sink into your soul somehow.

Connie