The Monday Morning Quarterback

In yesterday's sermon entitled, "Discipleship Diet," I worked with the extended biblical metaphor of hungering for God and for God's word. Just as we God has made us to hunger for physical nourishment, God has made us to hunger for spiritual nourishment. But our appetite for God can go astray even as our physical appetite can go astray.

One of the ways that we can feed ourselves on God's word is through the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, Divine Reading. There are four aspects of lectio divina: lectio (reading), meditatio (meditating), oratio (praying), and contemplatio, (contemplating). The process is not linear, one can move back and forth between the four parts. One of the things that scholar Eugene Peterson points out is that contemplatio "means submitting to the biblical revelation, taking it within ourselves, and the living it unpretentiously, without fanfare. Contemplation means living what we read not wasting any of it or hoarding any of it, but using it up in living...(Eat This Book, 112-114). The European monk, of the 12th century, Guido the Second, wrote, "Reading, as it were, puts the solid food into our mouths, meditation chews it and breaks it down, prayer obtains the flavour of it and contemplation is the very sweetness which makes us glad and refreshes us" (91). There's a healthy meal for you!