Tending the Soil of Your Heart: Morning Meditation

What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.

1 Corinthians 3:7 NLT

Meditation is a squishy word. What does it mean? How do you meditate? What do you meditate on? And perhaps the most important question of all… am I doing it “right.” I am sure there is a google answer for all of these questions, but my introduction came through the voice of the Psalmist.

But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.

Psalm 1:2 NLT

The scripture doesn’t end there. It goes on to describe those who meditate on God’s word. A beautiful picture that shapes the desires of my heart. “They will be like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.”

Near the home where we used to live there is a dogwood tree growing. Watching the growth of the tree for more than twenty-five years revealed a few truths about how faith forms.

First, most trees grow very slowly. Like you can’t really see much happening day in and day out. But when days turn to weeks and seasons and years, the growth becomes something you can see.

Second… most of the tree’s work happens underground. The roots that develop are providing nutrition, moisture, and stability. It’s messy work that happens in the dark where no one, even the tree, can’t see.

Finally, there will be good years when the budding and blooming are all beauty and joy. And there are times when one little white flower is all that comes, but that little bloom signifies even in the hardest of times there is growth.

This is what meditation looks like for me. It’s a slowing to consider each word or phrase of a scripture. A pause to consider and question what it means for the daily life of faith. There are moments it feels as if nothing is happening because you can’t see the results. And times of rejoicing in the tiniest of blooms that reveal the pain of the hard doesn’t have the last word.

On Thursday morning when we meet online for morning meditations, I often remind myself and others. This is a practice, and the first step is showing up. That’s really all we can do. Like the tree we don’t dig up roots and walk to a better place. We can’t control the weather or the circumstances around us. We simply are here… in this space… in this moment trusting God to do the growing.