Sadly, New Agers and practitioners of eastern religions may have more experience with meditation than many Christians do these days. But it hasn't always been that way. And it shouldn't stay that way.

When other religious systems describe meditation, they generally mean connecting with the inner consciousness, emptying the mind, and becoming one with the universe. But this is not Christian meditation.

The Old Testament word for "meditate" suggests "muttering" and "musing." Appropriately, Christian meditation involves internal discussion and musing on the Lord and His Word.

Joshua 1:8 commands us to meditate on God's Word day and night. And we see the Psalmist contemplating not only God's Word, but also God Himself. In Ps. 27:4, David writes of his deep yearning to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. In Ps. 104:34, David declares that his meditation of God shall be sweet.

The church fathers and saints perpetuated the practice of meditation. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) wrote a set of spiritual exercises, still in print today, to help people meditate on the life of Jesus. In them, he encourages the student to put himself into the scenes of Jesus' life, pondering them in his imagination and thus experiencing Jesus in the heart as well as the mind.

A couple of centuries later, Madame Guyon (1647–1717) compared meditating on Scripture to eating. "In physical food you receive no nourishment until you chew and swallow the food. The food may taste good in your mouth as you continue to enjoy its flavor. But it is in swallowing and digesting that it benefits the body. In an act of love, full of respect and confidence in God, swallow the blessed spiritual food He has given you . . .don't wander from truth to truth and from subject to subject. The right way is to allow each individual truth to be meditated upon while its sweet flavor remains fresh" (Experiencing God through Prayer).

Some believers these days are reticent to involve the imagination in their prayers over concerns that it can be led astray by the flesh or the evil one. Richard J. Foster (Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home) responds: "Just as we believe that God can take our reason (fallen as it is) and sanctify it and use it for his good purposes, so we believe he can sanctify the imagination and use it for his good purposes."

Meditation on God and His Word brings deep inner peace (Is. 26:3), joy (Ps. 104:34), wisdom and insight (Ps. 119:97–99), and hope (Lam. 3:21–23). It takes time and practice to meditate, but in this hectic, overextended culture of ours, how we need to learn this delightful discipline!