Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Worth Quoting: A Tea Analogy

I love, love, love, LOVE the Bible. I do. I love, love, LOVE drinking hot tea. So I just have to share this Donald Whitney quote on the Christian discipline of meditating.
Meditation goes beyond hearing, reading, studying, and even memorizing as a means of taking in God's Word. A simple analogy would be a cup of tea. In this analogy your mind is the cup of hot water and the tea bag represents your intake of Scripture. Hearing God's Word is like one dip of the tea bag into the cup. Some of the tea's flavor is absorbed by the water, but not as much as would occur with a more thorough soaking of the bag. Reading, studying, and memorizing God's Word are like additional plunges of the tea bag into the cup. The more frequently the tea enters the water, the more permeating its effect. Meditation, however, is like immersing the bag completely and letting it steep until all the rich tea flavor has been extracted and the hot water is thoroughly tinctured reddish brown. Meditation on Scripture is like letting the Bible brew in the brain. Thus we might say that as the tea colors the water, meditation likewise "colors" our thinking. When we meditate on Scripture it colors our thinking about God, about God's ways and His world, and about ourselves. Similarly as the tea bag flavors the water, so through meditation we consistently "taste" or experience the reality taught in the text. The information on the page becomes experience in our hearts and minds and lives. Reading the Bible tells the believer, for example, of God's love. Meditation is more likely to convince him or her of it personally and, in biblically appropriate ways, to cause a person to feel loved by God. (Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, 47)
Do YOU have a favorite tea? Do YOU have a favorite passage of Scripture to meditate on? I'd love to hear from you!

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

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