Children Meditate

This weekend I took my two boys camping and we stayed on the Santiam River. Sunday morning as we were sitting by the fire with blue skies above and red trees around us, both boys were sitting on my lap as I read to them a few verses from Psalm 77. In particular, I read, "I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds."

I then asked them what it meant to 'meditate.' Jonathan said, "I don't know." Daniel stared at the fire. I said, do you remember that really good piece of chocolate you had last night after eating smores?" 'Yes.' "Do you remember how you ate that piece of chocolate really slowly?" (he had been very careful to suck on one small chunk for about ten minutes). "Yes." Well, that's like meditation. Instead of gobbling it up like Augustus Gloop (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), you took a long time tasting it and eating it.

Now look at that tree. To gobble it up would be to look at it quickly and then look away. But let's try meditating on that tree. What do you notice? Over the next ten minutes, they did describe all sorts of things about it--the moss hanging from it, the size of it's branches, the fact that it was alive and the one next to it was dead, etc. Until finally, Daniel said, "Can you go back to talking about chocolate?"

Well, we did go back to talking about chocolate, but even meditating on chocolate is meditating on God's deeds--God's good deeds. Taste and see that the Lord is Good (Ps. 34.8)