“Blessed is the one whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on it day and night.”
– Psalm 1:2
“Imagine you were living before we all had Bibles and someone told you to think about a Bible verse next time you woke up in the middle of the night. How would you be able to do that?”
This is a question that I asked our middle school and junior high students at the beginning of the semester. The answer I was looking for?
Memorize it.
And since we want students to be able to wake up at night and consider the wonders of God as they fall back asleep, that is what we do. With half of our class time every Sunday, the 5th through 8th grade students sit down with Bibles, blank pieces of paper, fill-in-the-blank copies of a passage, a deck of flash cards, or whatever system they have found that works for them, and they don’t just read, they go to work at storing up God’s word in their hearts.
Just this semester, over 60 of them have already memorized the great “Love Chapter” of 1 Corinthians 13.
This means that they can, at any moment during the day or night, follow scripture’s command to meditate on God’s word. But you can’t meditate on scripture if you don’t know it—and if you don’t meditate on scripture, you will meditate on something else.
Some of the smartest people in the world are tasked with getting you to think about your Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter feeds more than anything else. Corralling your attention is a billion-dollar industry. Essentially, what tech companies want you to do is to meditate on the content you see on your phone. To consume content, posts, or videos that you are going to think about day and night.
The way our relationship with our phones can accidentally be described by passages about God’s word is a little scary:
- “Remember these [funny Tiktoks] in your hearts and minds; carry them as symbols on your hands” – Deuteronomy 11:18
- “When [political Facebook posts I agree with] appeared, I devoured them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight,” – Jeremiah 15:16
- “My son, do not forget [that Instagram story], but keep the words in your heart” – Proverbs 3:1
This is a silly exercise, but the point is that if you don’t work to ensure it doesn’t happen, you will meditate, day and night, on social media, not God’s word.
One of the wonderful things about the brains that God has given us is that we are in charge of what goes on in them. As a person with diagnosed ADHD, my mind can be a certified distraction factory. But after a moment of mentally chasing the errant thoughts that pop into my mind, I get to say: alright that’s enough, let’s focus back on what I want to think about.
It is the same with our phones. We all know how easily we can tap on a notification and suddenly we are 45 minutes deep into an internet black hole, watching a video about something that doesn’t actually matter, or mad about something we have no control over. Phones and social media algorithms automate the distraction that my ADHD brain serves me: they direct our brain’s thinking from one thing to the next, always enticing us to scroll to the next post or to see one more video. But we get to decide when we stop. We don’t get to decide if we are going to meditate or not, but we do get to decide what we are going to meditate on. Don’t let your phone make that choice for you: meditate on scripture, not social media.
Which brings us back to the heart of the question I asked at the beginning of the semester. If we don’t do the work to store scripture up in our hearts, then the option to meditate on God’s word isn’t on the table. Instead of waking up and falling back asleep contemplating God’s love for us, we will reach for our phones to meditate on Youtube Shorts until we fall back asleep.
You cannot meditate on something you don’t have. The sixty-one middle schoolers who have memorized 1 Corinthians 13 this semester now have a tool in their belt that allows them to commune with the Word of God wherever and whenever they find themselves with a moment to spare.
Do the same thing. It will be hard at first, but God wants you to do this and he will help you. It doesn’t take as long as you think it will and there are incredibly helpful tools available for free online. Instead of letting some social media algorithms decide what you are going to meditate on, do the work to store up God’s word in your heart and meditate on it: devour it, remember it in your mind, make it your heart’s delight, keep it as close at hand as your actual hands.
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