Your Daydreams and Delights
I’ve been stuck on the same Bible-reading plan for twenty years. By stuck, I mean that I do this one over and over. I’ve tried others. But the Discipleship Journal plan has shaped me too deeply. I associate months and seasons with particular passages. It’s Genesis in January, of course, and with it, the book of Acts. January to March is the Gospel of Matthew. Psalms stretches seven months, from January to July. I now link September with Isaiah, October with Jeremiah, November with Ezekiel. December might be best: the end of John’s Gospel, with the Book of Revelation, and the 12 minor prophets — perfect for Advent.
One part of the plan that I love most is getting the whole month of June to walk slowly through the longest psalm. Psalm 119 is 176 verses. There are 22 stanzas; each stanza has eight lines. (Eight x 22 = 176.) So, I slow-walk this psalm for 22 days, just eight lines per day.
The last few Junes I’ve tried to make a special study of Psalm 119. Every verse celebrates God’s word: his testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandments, teaching, etc. And it’s remarkable how often Psalm 119 mentions the heart. (I’d love to write sometime about that.) But what captured my attention most this June was not just the frequent mentions of joy, rejoicing, and delight, but often the psalm pairs delight with meditation. It’s a theme that goes back to the very beginning of the Psalms: the happy man of Psalm 1 is he whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:1–2).
Hopefully you know what delight is, and have some real delights in your life and genuinely delight in your Maker and Redeemer — and so you delight in his word, because it’s his word, his speech, his self-revelation. But what comes to your mind when you hear the word meditation?
If you hear meditation on the street today, or in the break room, or if an algorithm harvests your attention with it, it’s likely not the biblical and Christian version. Our world has and talks about its meditation, emptying the mind, controlling your breathing, yada yada.
Hebrew meditation, and now Christian meditation, is almost exactly the opposite. It’s not emptying your mind but filling it. Fill it with God’s word, his thoughts, his perspective, his values, his delights. Don’t just read God’s word, like you read everything else in your life, scrolling and browsing and trying not to be changed by it much. But meditate on God’s word. Slow down, re-read, ponder, go deep, make connections, give your heart enough time to feel the significance of what’s being carried by the words you can so quickly send through your mind. Move at the pace of life-change, of heart-change.
And one particular contribution of Psalm 119 is its emphasis on the reciprocal relationship between delight and meditation. You will meditate on your delights. And you will delight in what you meditate on.
According to verse 23, “your servant will mediate on your statutes.” Why is that? Because “your testimonies are my delight” (verse 24).
Verse 47: “I find my delight in your commandments.” Therefore, verse 48, “I will meditate on your statutes.”
Verse 77: “your law is my delight.” So, verse 78, “I will meditate on your precepts.”
Verses 14–16 show this with special clarity:
First, “In the way of your testimonies I delight” (verse 14).
Second, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways” (verse 15).
So, third, “I will delight in your statutes” (verse 16).
Delight leads to meditation, and meditation feeds delight. What you give your mind and heart to, your attention to, is one of the most important things about you. Your daydreams are revealing. What you instinctively ponder and ruminate on over and over again reveals the deep longings and delights of your heart. And what we consciously direct ourselves to linger over, what we give ourselves to meditating on, deeply shapes us in return.
Choose to meditate on God’s word, linger there without hurry and without distraction, and day after day you will delight more in God’s word. And when you delight in God more, you will be more inclined to meditate on that object of your delight.
So, Cities Church, check yourself with me here at midsummer, and let’s resolve afresh: to meditate on who and what is supremely delightful, knowing that our meditation will lead to further delight.
