Most of us have become accustomed to living in a world of “breaking news.” Information in quantities past generations could never have conceived bombard us constantly, even when we would rather shut it out.
It is not only Fox and CNN, but program interruptions, billboard assault, store signs in attention competitive fluorescent colors, Iphone games, texts, emails and television advertisements promising to solve everything from nasal drip to legal quandaries battle for our attention and, more so, our money.
It is simply a part of our way of life.
(There once was a theory among psychiatrists which held that schizophrenia was at least in part the product of the mind being overly inundated with so much sensory perception that the person could not digest the flow of information. I would argue that modern life has disproved the theory or else the entire population of the world would all be diagnosed as schizophrenic!)
So, the event which I bring to your attention today most likely does not seem even remotely possible. But on today’s date, April 18 in 1930, the BBC evening news came on air with a simple four word announcement: “There is no news.” And the rest of the news time was spent listening to the Wagner opera “Parsifal.”
One cannot help but ponder the question: How would the audience today react if one of the major news sources opened the evening news hour in the same manner? No wars, no mass shootings, no political commentaries. My personal opinion is that there would be a collective negative reaction. We are accustomed to living in a soap opera world with a steady flow of emotion laden substance.
My mind recalled a Baptist pastor friend of many years gone by who went to a new church and made a slight addition to the Sunday morning’s order of service. Right before the pastoral prayer, he inserted one minute of quiet, personal prayer time. I was completely taken aback by its negative reception. People were appalled at the “waste” of time the new preacher had forced on them.
My own explanation of this response is that these were not evil-minded people looking for a fight, but rather that their reaction reflected this overindulgence of our emotional system in the sensational aspects of everyday life.
To put it a bit more succinctly, we as spiritually minded people have forgotten how to prayerfully meditate. (Allow me to interject here a distinction between the Eastern understanding of meditation in the Buddhist or Hindu faiths which is a very wholesome form of meditation. However, it is of a non-thinking, emptying of the mind concept. Christian meditation is the listening part of a prayer life. Simply having shared with the Lord your thanks, praise, troubles or petitions is not a complete prayer life. Listening for God’s response and guidance is equally important.)
For a contrast model of a highly spiritually successful life, we need to look no further than Jesus Himself. At virtually every major event in His ministry, Jesus discovered some isolation where He could be alone not only to talk with the Heavenly Father (pray) but also to listen to the guiding Spirit (meditate).
Before miracles, after healings, before multiplying the five loaves and two fishes, before teaching, after proclaiming, early morning, late evening — every circumstance of ministry one can imagine and especially before His crucifixion. He meditated before setting out on His ministry but also at intervals during.
One of the best illustrations of His reliance upon His practice of meditation could be found between the lines of that famous story of Him feeding the 5,000. He prayed and meditated before, presumably for strength and guidance, as well as afterwards for the renewal of the spiritual strength spent in service.
The thousands of years old description of the Psalmist’s for the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked is still not only accurate but equally applicable for upstanding character, for “his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law he meditates day and night.”
Most Popular
Comments / 0