Advent Meets Lectio Divina

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Image result for Holly clip artHappy Advent!  This is the intersection of two of my favorite things:  Advent and Lectio Divina. If you have been around me for more than one season, you probably already know that I am a little obsessed with Advent.  I treasure this waiting space in December and the way we are summoned to rail against the expectation of busy and hustle and bustle...and instead hush and still and wait. Doesn’t that just make your soul say, “ahhh….exhale….yes, please!”  
If you have been around me long you know that Lectio Divina is one of my jams. I love this practice because it is an ordered invitation to encounter the Word in such a way you can’t help but feel it slide into the corners of your inner world where it really shifts things.  
  
In Eugene Peterson’s invitation, "Eat This Book" (Peterson, 2006) (Author of The Message) he highlights the Hebrew word for meditate that captures the essence of Lectio Divina.   The word is hagah.  It is used in verses like Psalm 1:  
  
" 1 Blessed is the one     who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take     or sit in the company of mockers, 2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,     and who meditates (hagah), on his law day and night. 
But, he points out, that Isaiah 31:4 uses it to refer to a lion growling over his prey:  
“As a lion growls (hagah),      a great lion over its prey—" 

Peterson muses that his dog chewing his prized bone,  quiet seriously, "makes those low throaty rubbles of pleasure as he gnawed, enjoyed, and savored his prize, as Isaiah's lion did his pray." (p. 2) Interestingly, the SAME word as meditate in the other scriptures we might be familiar with. What on earth?  

He says that this is a powerful metaphor for how we are invited to read and handle scripture, "like letting a very slowly dissolving lozenge melt imperceptibly in your mouth".  

This is what meditation is. 

Waiting until it REALLY sinks in...to your believing place. 

So this month my offering is an audio file I made, guiding you through John 1 in a Lectio Divina reading.  John 1 is my favorite place to start during Advent. It doesn’t stop striking my heart….God who breathed the universe of planets and burning starts and wormholes into existence folded himself up in the womb of Mary because, “He didn’t want heaven without us, so Jesus you brought heaven down…”  

Click Here to listen to the meditation:  www.jordanstones.net/soundcloud
  
Or, I have it uploaded to SoundCloud if you have that app:  https://soundcloud.com/mandi-peek 

Be intentional, slow down, be still, and enjoy every chance you have to encounter Emmanuel this season. 
  
Peterson.Eugene. 2006. Eat This Book. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI. 
     

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