Weekend Meditations

The following is an excerpt from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Life Together". Next week will continue his excursus on Meditation.

It might be asked, Why is a special time needed for this since we meditate already during the common devotion?

This is the answer. The period of personal meditation is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose. There is not occasion here for spiritual experiments. But for these three things there must be time, for God Himself requires them of us. Even if initially meditation means nothing but this one thing, that we are performing a service that we owe to God, it would still be sufficient.

The time of meditation does not let us down into the void and abyss of loneliness; it lets us be alone with the Word. And in so doing it gives us solid ground on which to stand and clear directions as to the steps we must take.

Whereas in our devotions together we read long consecutive passages, in our personal meditation we confine ourselves to a brief selected text, which possibly may not be changed for a whole week. If in our reading of the Scriptures together we are led into the whole length and breadth of the Bible, here we go into the unfathomable depths of a particular sentence and word. Both are equally necessary, "that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height" (Eph. 3:18).