Do Christians Meditate?



If you learn a prayer by heart, then are saying it or thinking it, you will tend to go into meditation any time you pause in the midst of the prayer. Or if you pause at the end, you will tend to experience a few moments of meditation.

If you want to encourage meditation, then take a restful attitude at some phase of your prayers. You can be dynamic, pleading, invocative that is all great. It will set the inner temple. Then when you let go and are at ease, you may enter the silence.

Take any prayer – the Lord's Prayer, a Psalm, or the word Amen. Ask the Holy Spirit to repeat the word in your heart, or in your being.

Then simply rest with the phrase – shorter is better. Welcome the process of cleansing, welcome the thoughts that come. There is no need to step outside your religion or your faith to meditate. On the contrary, it is much better to be right in the center of your faith, at ease and natural.

At the same time, you do not need to impose any particular mood of holiness upon yourself. Set up the mood at the beginning so that you feel safe and protected, then let go and rest. You are safer meditating than you are sleeping. When you go to sleep at night, you fall unconscious. You have done this every day of your life, and rest is rejuvenative.

Meditation is resting in the Lord: Come unto me all who are weary and burdened, I shall give you rest (Matt: 11:28)

In case you didn't see it, here are some notes toward a Christian approach to meditation. Actually, since it is based in Genesis and the Psalms, it might be useful to any of the People of the Book – Jews, Christians, and Muslims.