Belated Meditation

If anyone were to ask me right now what the past few weeks of my life have looked like, I would eagerly respond "Crazy!".  If anyone were to ask me how I have dealt with that, I would have to honestly answer "I have pre-occupied myself with everything that seems to overwhelm me to try to make sense of it."

I laughed when I saw that the staff devo was about Meditation.  Why?  I spent that week on a trip, on and off a bus, living in a crowded hostel, with the 24 other people that I live with on this study abroad semester.  My first thoughts were, "How on earth am I supposed to meditate when I am constantly surrounded by people?"

This semester, I often find that what I need most is time alone with God to "rest in the grace and mercy of the Father."  I have also found this semester that, like last week, I pre-occupy myself with everything that I am doing or feel that I should be doing and "neglect the true nature of [my] very self".

The topic of meditation could not have come at a better time.  As the semester comes to a close next week, I am growing tired and am in search of rest.  It is easy to just bury myself in the things that I want to do with my friends or to go hide out in my bunk for a little bit, but the rest that I truly need is found in meditation with God.

This section of the devo hit so close to home, "We can either allow our doing to flow out of our being, or we can become so pre-occupied with our doing that we neglect the true nature of our very self.5 Does resting in the grace and mercy of the Father result in idleness? Hardly,6 "often meditation will yield insights that are deeply practical, almost mundane.' (Foster, 22)"  I love that it says that meditation will "yield insights that are deeply practical, almost mundane" because I have been grasping for insight without going to the Father, the one who will provide meaning, the one who tells me who I am.

The quote from the Staff Culture point about Discipline was really convicting, "The challenge is that the fullness of your creator is not something that you acquire. It is freely and extravagantly given. What lacks is the discipline and resolve to commune intimately with the creator’s abundance."

I think that it is time to find my rest in God encounter the Living Word so that my "thoughts, affections, and ambitions, are turned to face and honor and glorify him" (Staff Devo, Joyce Huggett).