Sunday.....Christianity.....Aah...Tabletalk!

There was a movie a few decades ago, a comedy, where a man was trying to impress a young lady who was very cultured. Advice given to him was that if the topic of classical music came up, just say Aah...Bach and that may get him by. If Old English Heroic Epic Poetry ever comes up in a conversation, I may just say Aah...Beowulf.  I read Beowulf in high school. It was a great learning experience. I learned how to read thousands of words straight through and not understand a single thought they conveyed. I wasn't the greatest student in grade school and high school, but I was neat. A nun once beat me with a pointer because I was cleaning out my desk during a test, and my freshman high school history teacher once threw all my books out of the fourth floor window for the same offense. I once held a fancy for a young lady in College who was very cultured, in fact she taught Theater Arts 101 as a grad student. I think this was the beginning of my really reading for I devoured that text book to  impress her. I took an acting class and went to plays....Aah...Moliere!  The peak of my impressing her was when I cleared up a long standing mystery at the local playhouse when I correctly identified King Edward VIII in a Hirschfeld mural that eluded even the director. I guessed correctly for I knew it was either him or Dagwood Bumstead....Aah...Blondie!  But alas, I'm not cultured. I'd rather go to a Three Stooges marathon than a ballet. I read everything I had to through high school, but I didn't really read it. But I've had a metamorphosis, Aah...Kafka!   Reformed theologian, pastor and teacher R. C. Sproul, through his Ligonier Ministries (http://www.ligonier.org/), publishes a monthly devotional/Bible study called Tabletalk after Martin Luther's work of the same title. This booklet comes to our house early so I'm usually a little bit ahead of schedule. Today I was reading the July 15th offering and the Bible verse to be considered was Joshua 1:8, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous. Sproul writes that Authentic meditation...is not some exercise wherein we try to empty our minds and expunge all desires in order to achieve some kind of mystic experience or melding with the transcendent. What R. C. is directing us to is a pondering and a considering of the scripture that we read. Many years ago, a friend commented to me in a bit of theological debate, that he had read the entire Bible...cover to cover. I can only hope that he got more out of it than I did with Beowulf. Just this past Friday, another friend volunteered the information that he was reading the Bible every morning. He seemed reticent to say that he only read a little bit every day and had to think hard on what he was reading. I was stunned for he was reading it in the most possibly beneficial way! We have a tendency today to think that merely passing the words from our eyes and through the brain permits the reading requirement to be checked off. For an analogy, consider a time when you had a significant problem in some area of your life and you meditated on it throughout the day, trying to find and answer. You might re-read, over and over again, the letter you received in the mail detailing the problem. There are books that I fly through and others that I devour every letter of every word. Pilgrim's Progress is one, and I have often meditated on the various parts of Christian's journey and the people that he met along the way. R. C. Sproul concludes with We meditate on Scripture not simply to fill our minds with knowledge, but to prepare ourselves to act rightly even when the text is not before us.  If you are new to reading Scripture, ponder over what you read, consider the implications in your life and meditate upon the commentary at the bottom of the page