Psalms 5:1; 119:15, 48
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation.
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I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. . . .
My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate in thy statutes.
An earlier psalm counseled us to “commune with your own heart.”38 This psalm gives that practice a name—meditation. None of us are alone with our own thoughts, prayers, dreams, and reflections as much as we ought to be. “The world is too much with us,” Wordsworth said,39 and that world is often noisy, brash, raucous, and vulgar. It would seem that most of what the everyday world offers is calculated not to let us meditate, not to let us commune with our own heart.
Deadlines, car pools, telephones, and to-do lists. Horns honking, bells ringing, numbers to memorize, and people to meet. We need some peace and quiet. We need some quiet and peace. And our circumstances are often such that we cannot “get away” to the summit of a mountain or a quiet stretch of seashore. Sometimes we can’t even get to the city park. But we should try to “get away” into our inner space, into that quiet spiritual center God gave every one of us. Nowhere can anyone find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his or her own soul. We need to turn some things down and turn some things off. We need to be quiet.
President David O. McKay taught: “We pay too little attention to the value of meditation, a principle of devotion. In our worship there are two elements: One is spiritual communion arising from our own meditation; the other, instruction from others, particularly from those who have authority to guide and instruct us. Of the two, the more profitable introspectively is the meditation. Meditation is the language of the soul. It is defined as ‘a form of private devotion, or spiritual exercise, consisting in deep, continued reflection on some religious theme.’ Meditation is a form of prayer.”40
Part of the reason I find meditation so precious is that it allows God to speak to me. Prayer, for the most part, is our urgent speaking to Him. We have a lot on our minds. We have a lot in our hearts. We have many needs and wants and wishes. My prayers are sometimes filled almost completely with a laundry list of requests.
In such urgent need there is a temptation not to listen before and during and after our spoken prayers. Too seldom do we prepare to pray, and too seldom do we quietly reflect after our prayers. These are times for reverent meditation. They allow our minds and our hearts to communicate clearly—and to be communicated to clearly—without words, or at least without spoken words.
Spoken words are crucial. Vocal prayer is a fundamental requirement in gospel living. The Savior has asked us all to pray as He prayed. But surely we should also meditate as He meditated, thinking of God quietly, reverently, and often. In our religious discourse we speak of the whisperings of the Spirit. We need to listen for those whisperings. They are still and they are small—but they are essential. Meditation is one of the methods by which we show “respect unto [God’s] ways.”
Notes
^39. William Wordsworth, “Personal Talk," in The New Oxford Book of English Verse, chosen and edited by Helen Gardner (1972), 507.
^40. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: David O. McKay (2003), 31–32.