Into God

Texts:
- Psalms 49-52
- Mark 3-5
- Zechariah 1-7

Lord, it is so good to be back at this table with You, this feast of Your word. I have kept up with the reading, but reading is like drinking where writing for me is the eating, the chewing, the tasting. Thank You for allowing this morning to unfold brilliantly for our time together.

What's on my mind today? The word in. Or into. I read this passage last night and it got me thinking this morning when I woke.

Psalm 48:9 - "Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love."

What does meditate really mean Lord? To think. Yes, but there seems to be a deeper meaning to that word. I have recently come to redefine meditate as imagining ourselves into a situation. It then helps us react accordingly to that reality. So what does it mean to meditate on unfailing love? Well, simply to imagine ourselves into that love, to think of ourselves as surrounded by that amazing reality and ponder its greatness.

A Catholic sister put it in a very tangible way. Imagine that the entire room or house that you are in is suddenly flooded with water, yet you are still able to breathe and float around in this underwater paradise. Imagine the water's feel upon your skin as you stroke through it. Now, imagine that this water is God's ever-present love. That is a way into the mystery. It is through imagination.

Meditation, it seems Lord, is about asking questions, imagining experiences, and thinking about what we would do, feel, be if those questions and experiences were real. The thing about doing that with Your word is that when we step back, we see that they are real.

Because You are real, we simply need a way into You. The word in shows up over my Psalms reading this morning. We are taught wisdom in Your inmost place (Psalm 51). We are olive trees flourishing IN the house of God (Psalm 52). If we are evil, then we are uprooted from the land of the living (Psalm 52) and tossed OUT.

Which is what makes meditation upon Your word so important. It is our initial way into You. Think about how we should respond to reality. Then in responding in the way we just imagined, we are living IN You. We live IN Christ.

May I continue to be enthralled with living in You today, Jesus Christ my Lord. May You continue Your work while living IN and through me. May my words and actions be those of one trying to swim deeper into the unfailing love that envelops me. Blessed are You, Lord God of the imagination, providing our minds with a way to think into You so that our earthly minds can respond accordingly. Blessed are You, and praise be to my God, God of all.