Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5)
Doing these meditations every morning at times feels as though I’m spinning in circles. Isn’t this about the fifteenth time I’m being called upon to provide a reflection based on this verse?
But, of course, I have no one to blame but myself. I’m the one who came up with this whole meditation idea, and I’m the one who decided to repeat these meditations four times throughout the month. In all honesty, sometimes I wonder what in the world I was thinking (or smoking) when I put this thing together.
But then again, unlike others, I am not a creature of habit; I am a creature of freedom. I don’t like to be tied down by anything . . . especially a task like writing a blog entry, and especially when I am expected to execute that task 356 days a year, indefinitely!
But once again, there is no one to blame but myself. No one held a gun to my head and ordered me to write devotions every morning at the crack of dawn or eat a bullet. I brought this on myself.
Obligatory repetition: I hate this perhaps more than anything else in life. The idea that I have to do something, and the idea that I have to do it again and again. It feels dehumanizing, mechanistic… It’s like I’m on some assembly line somewhere, producing one piece of something that is added to another piece. But I keep creating the same piece again and again and again.
Some mornings it feels like I’m repeating my blog entries word for word. I get this eerie feeling that I’ve said this before. But what more can be said about this same verse? Haven’t I said all that I could possibly say about this verse?
But then again, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The fact that reflecting upon Scripture can become mundane, drab, repetitive . . . that is the whole reason why meditation is necessary, and that is the whole reason why the repetition is necessary.
This morning I perceive a fresh and anew that I still have so far to go. These words, Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you . . . They should never lose their significance in my hearing, even if I were to reflect upon them every moment of the rest of my life. The purpose of my meditation is to bring my heart and mind into alignment with these words, so that they ring true in the depths of my being. And when this happens, there is nothing obligatory or repetitive about this devotional exercise at all.
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How are you doing with the daily practice of meditation? Are you finding it difficult? My book can help, and I’d like to give it to you for free!
