Ponder the Benefits of Meditation

Or, meditate on the benefits of pondering. Or, ponder the benefits of pondering. Or, meditate on the benefits of meditating. Well, you get the point. Webster’s defines the two words exactly the same – to think deeply.

Here are a few thoughts by Thomas Watson from Heaven Taken by Storm on the topic of mediation:

“Meditation may be thus described: it is a holy exercise of mind whereby we bring the truths of God to remembrance, and seriously ponder upon them and apply them to ourselves.

But where is the meditating Christian? Here I might lament the lack of holy meditation. Most people live in a hurry; they are so distracted with the cares of the world that they can find no time to meditate or scarcely ask their souls how they do.

Those beasts under the law that did not chew the cud were unclean. Such as do not chew the cud by holy meditation are to be reckoned among the unclean.

As the bee sucks the flower, so by meditation we suck out the sweetness of a truth. It is not the receiving of meat into the mouth, but the digesting of it that makes it nutritive. So it is not the receiving of the most excellent truths in at the ear that nourishes our souls, but the digesting of them by meditation…[it] is like a soaking rain that goes to the root of the tree and makes it bring forth fruit.

The hearing of the Word may affect us, but the meditating upon it transforms us.

I dare be bold to say that if men would spend but one quarter of an hour every day in contemplating heavenly objects, it would leave a mighty impression upon them, and, through the blessing of God might prove the beginning of a happy conversion.”

Watson also mentions a few good topics for meditation:

• Meditate seriously upon the corruption of your nature…This sin cleaves to us as a leprosy. This original pollution makes us guilty before the Lord; and even though we would never commit actual sin, it merits hell.

• Meditate seriously upon the death and passion of Christ…How could we look upon Him whom we have pierced and not mourn over Him?

• Meditate upon the uncertainty of all sublunary comforts. Creature delights have their flux and reflux…The meditation of the uncertainty of all things under the sun would much moderate our affections for them.

• Meditate on God’s severity against sin. Every arrow in God’s quiver is shot against it.

• Meditate on eternal life…[this] would make us labor for a spiritual life…[it] would comfort us in regard to the shortness of natural life…That life to come is subject to no infirmities; it knows no period.

Watson closes out the chapter on meditation and prayer by saying:

“Get a love for spiritual things. We usually meditate on those things that we love. The sensual man can muse on his pleasures, and the covetous man on his bags of gold. Did we love heavenly things, we would meditate more on them. Many say they cannot meditate because they lack memory; but is it not rather because they lack affection? Did they love the things of God, they would make them their continual study and meditation.”