RICHARD J. FOSTER
excerpt from Celebration of Discipline
Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God’s voice
and obey his word. It is that simple. I wish I could make it more
complicated for those who like things difficult. It involves no hidden
mysteries, no secret mantras, no mental gymnastics, no esoteric
flights into the cosmic consciousness. The truth of the matter is that
the great God of the universe, the Creator of all things desires our
fellowship. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve talked with God
and God talked with them—they were in communion. Then came
the Fall, and in an important sense, there was a rupture of the sense
of perpetual communion, for Adam and Eve hid from God. But God
continued to reach out to his rebellious children, and in stories of
such persons as Cain, Abel, Noah, and Abraham we see God
speaking and acting, teaching and guiding.
Moses learned, albeit with many vacillations and detours, how to
hear God’s voice and obey his word. In fact, Scripture witnesses that
God spoke to Moses “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend”
(Exod. 33:11). There was a sense of intimate relationship, of communion.
As a people, however, the Israelites were not prepared for such
intimacy. Once they learned a little about God, they realized that
being in his presence was risky business and told Moses so: “You
speak to us, and we will hear; but let not God speak to us, lest we
die.” (Exod. 20:19). In this way they could maintain religious respectability
without the attendant risks. This was the beginning of the
great line of the prophets and the judges, Moses being the first. But
it was a step away from the sense of immediacy, the sense of the
cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.
In the fullness of time Jesus came and taught the reality of the
kingdom of God and demonstrated what life could be like
in that kingdom. He established a living fellowship that would know
him as Redeemer and King, listening to him in all things and obeying
him at all times. In his intimate relationship with the Father, Jesus
modeled for us the reality of that life of hearing and obeying. “The
Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the
Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise” (John
5:19). “I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge”
(John 5:30). “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own
authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (John
14:10). When Jesus told his disciples to abide in him, they could
understand what he meant for he was abiding in the Father. He declared
that he was the Good Shepherd and that his sheep know his
voice (John 10:4). He told us that the Comforter would come, the
Spirit of truth, who would guide us into all truth (John 16:13).
In his second volume Luke clearly implies that following his resurrection
and the ascension Jesus continues “to do and teach” even
if people cannot see him with the naked eye (Acts 1:1). Both Peter
and Stephen point to Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophecy in
Deuteronomy 18:15 of the prophet like Moses who is to speak and
whom the people are to hear and obey (Acts 3:22, 7:37).* In the book
of Acts we see the resurrected and reigning Christ, through the Holy
Spirit, teaching and guiding his children: leading Philip to new unreached
cultures (Act 8), revealing his messiahship to Paul (Acts 9),
teaching Peter about his Jewish nationalism (Acts 10), guiding the
Church out of its cultural captivity (Acts 15). What we see over and
over again is God’s people learning to live on the basis of hearing
God’s voice and obeying his word.
This, in brief, forms the biblical foundation for meditation, and
the wonderful news is that Jesus has not stopped acting and speaking.
He is resurrected and at work in our world. He is not idle, nor has he
developed laryngitis. He is alive and among
us as our Priest to forgive us, our Prophet to teach us, our King to
rule us, our Shepherd to guide us.
All the saints throughout the ages have witnessed to this reality.
How sad that contemporary Christians are so ignorant of the vast
sea of literature on Christian meditation by faithful believers
throughout the centuries! And their testimony to the joyful life of
perpetual communion is amazingly uniform. From Catholic to
Protestant, from Eastern Orthodox to Western Free Church we are
urged to “live in his presence in uninterrupted fellowship.” The
Russian mystic Theophan the Recluse says, “To pray is to descend
with the mind into the heart, and there to stand before the face of
the Lord, ever-present, all seeing, within you.” The Anglican divine
Jeremy Taylor declares, “Meditation is the duty of all.” And in our
day Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when asked why he
meditated, replied, “Because I am a Christian.” The witness of
Scripture and the witness of the devotional masters are so rich, so
alive with the presence of God that we would be foolish to neglect
such a gracious invitation to experience, in the words of Madame
Guyon, “the depths of Jesus Christ.”
*See also Deut. 18:15–18; Matt. 17:5; John 1:21, 4:19–25, 6:14, 7:37–40; Heb. 1:1–13,
3:7–8, 12:25.
