He is A Place of Safety and Rest
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruits in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does he prospers.
Psalm 1:1-3 (NIV)
I’ve always been a bit confused about what meditation means. I’m not comfortable with the idea of emptying your head of everything. Goodness knows where my mind would wander off to! Those of you who know me know that I use my notebooks, sketchbooks, and journals to process thoughts, ideas, and questions. Sometimes these ideas emerge as finished stitched pieces of work and sometimes they just help me get to grips with a concept I’m finding difficult. The answer can come immediately or years later. Over the last eighteen months I’ve had to go through some pretty gruelling medical treatments which can be easy to think about like a journey, a route, a map, a way. I found I was trying to think of making my own way on this journey. The picture I had in my head was of me in a sweltering jungle trying to machete my way through impenetrable jungle creepers but one evening I worked on a couple of pages in my sketch book which looked like a dirty graffiti wall. I seemed to be continually writing the word the way… the way… the way… the way but after half an hour of struggling with this idea I found myself on the next pages of my sketch book, just writing the word follow. What had been a struggle for me suddenly transformed itself into the answer. I didn’t need to find the way. The way had already been set for me. All I had to do was follow.
That’s one form of meditation and here’s another form.
On Tuesday evenings twice a month we have a small community of artists who meet to explore who Jesus is. Sometimes we give out homework. One week our homework was to repeatedly read out loud, in our own space, the first 3 verses of Psalm 1 and see which words started to be meaningful to each of us as individuals. Then we had to find an image or write another few lines to complete the psalm in our own way. The psalmists always seem to be writing from a really personal perspective. We wanted to engage with this process and to see how we would have personally worked through the ideas they were exploring. My homework turned into my own version of psalm 1
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruits in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does he prospers. …………“I found a place of peace tucked into the roots, hidden from the path. It gives me a place to meditate. A time to be free from confusion and pain. It is a mossy sweet smelling place of comfort and rest.”
Here Jesus has become a place of safety and rest.
This blog post was brought to you by… Ruth Higham
Ruth has been a member of the Rock Community Church since it started. She is a freelance textile artist and a member of several exhibiting groups. She is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She is not the most organised of people so can’t decide what her favourite things are but they include God, family, friends, stitching, drawing, colour, cooking, gardening, reading and brown paper packages tied up in string.