Inspirational Quotes on Meditation

“There is a 'movement' of meditation, expressing the basic 'paschal' rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ. Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are 'death' - a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance. Note how common this theme is in the Psalms. If we need help in meditation we can turn to scriptural texts that express this profound distress of man in his nothingness and his total need of God. Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light - he hears us, answers our prayer, recognizes our need, and grants us the help we require - if only by giving us more faith to believe that he can and will help us in his own time. This is already a sufficient answer.”

“The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates.”

“The truly Christian imagination never lets Jesus Christ out of her sight.”

“Rather than walk about holy places we can thus pause in our thoughts, examine our heart, and visit the wheel promised land.”

“Take this as the secret of Christ's life in you: His Spirit dwells in your innermost spirit. Meditate on it, believe in it, and remember it until this glorious truth produces within you a holy fear and wonderment that the Holy Spirit indeed abides in you!”

“[M]editation is the life of of most other duties; and the view of heaven is the life of meditation (559).”

“Most of us think too much of speech, which is but the shell of thought.”

“He was, however, unable to give much prolonged or continuous thought to anything that evening , or to concentrate on any one idea; and anyway, even if he had been able to, he would not have found his way to a solution of these questions in a conscious manner; now he could only feel. In place of dialectics life had arrived, and in his consciousness something of a wholly different nature must now work towards fruition.”

“The greatest single distinguishing feature of the omnipotence of God is that our imagination gets lost thinking about it.”

“When we find a man meditating on the words of God, my friends, that man is full of boldness and is successful.”

“Meditation is love's nourishment.”

“Prayer that is born of meditation upon the Word of God is the prayer that soars upward most easily to God's listening ears.”

“The reason we come away so cold from reading the word is, because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.”

“Our silence might be better than our voices if our solitude was spent with God.”

“Reflect that we all have our Poonas, bolt-holes from unpleasant reality. The danger, as Miller is always insisting, of meditation becoming such a bolt-hole. Quietism can be mere self-indulgence. Charismata like masturbations. Masturbations, however, that are dignified, by the amateur mystics who practise them, with all the most sacred names of religion and philosophy. 'The contemplative life.' It can be made a kind of high-brow substitute for Marlene Dietrich: a subject for erotic musings in the twilight. Meditation - valuable, not as a pleasurable end; only as a means for effecting desirable changes in the personality and mode of existence. To live contemplatively is not to live in some deliciously voluptuous or flattering Poona; it is to live in London, but to live there in a non-cockney style.”

“Centering our thoughts on God begins with what I like to call discovery. That is, when we discover a great truth about God, we begin to meditate on that truth until it captivates our whole thinking process. That in turn will lead to worship. If worship is based on meditation, and meditation is based on discovery, what is discovery based on? On time spent with God in prayer and the Word. It is sad that many view prayer primarily as a way to get things. We have lost sight of the companion aspect of prayer - of being still and aware of God's wonderful presence and just communing with Him there.”

“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.”

“Now, as old Dr. Bonner, of Glasgow, said, "The Lord didn't show Joshua how to use the sword, but He told him how he should meditate on the Lord day and night, and then he would have good success."”

“It is not mere reading, but meditation -- "meditation all the day," as the Psalmist says -- which extracts the sweetness and the power out of Scripture.”

“When we find our souls at all declining, it is best to raise them up presently by some awakening meditations, such as of the presence of God, of the strict reckoning we are to make, of the infinite love of God in Christ and the fruits of it, of the excellency of a Christian's calling, of the short and uncertain time of this life, of how little good all those things that steal away our hearts will do us before long, and of how it shall be for ever with us hereafter, as we spend this short time well or ill. The more we make way for such considerations to sink into our hearts, the more we shall rise nearer to that state of soul which we shall enjoy in heaven.”