Meditation: You've Got to Chew the Cud

Photo by: ewanr

"Merely reading, hearing, and having transient thoughts of biblical truths do not leave half the impression of goodness upon the soul, which they would do, if they might be recalled, and fixed there by serious thought.  Without this meditation, the good food of the soul passes through the understanding, and either is quite lost, or is like raw and undigested food, which does not nourish those creatures that chew the cud, until they have retrieved it back and chewed it better.  Meditation is the Christian's way of chewing the cud. All outward means of salvation do little good in comparison, except that by meditation they are thoroughly considered, and laid up in the heart...Meditation digests, engrafts, and turns the spiritual knowledge gained from the God's Word...into the very life and substance of the soul, changing and transforming you according to it, so that God's will as revealed in the Bible and your will become one, so that you choose and delight in the same things as he does."  -Henry Scudder (as quoted in Lou Priolo's Pleasing People: How Not to Be an Approval Junkie)