Sermon Illustrations on meditation

A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds his little one close to him, he cares little whether the child is looking...

When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly. Only in Jesus Christ are we able to pray, and with him we also know that we shall be heard. And so we must learn ...

Two Hebrew words deeply inform and enrich our understanding of meditative prayer: haga and siach . Our English Bibles most often translate both of these words with the simple word “meditate...

Prayer is like love. Words pour at first. Then we are more silent and can communicate in monosyllables. In difficulties a gesture is enough, a word, or nothing at all—love is enough. Thus the time com...

In the midst of an exceedingly busy ministry Jesus made a habit of withdrawing to “a lonely place apart” (Matt. 14:13; see also Matt. 4:1-11, Luke 6:12, Matt. 14:23, Mark 1:35, Mark 6:31, Luke 5:16, M...

In 1933, as Hitler’s Nazi party rose to power in Germany, the Jewish artist Marc Chagall painted Solitude. In the foreground, a seated man sits wrapped in a tallit, or prayer shawl. His right hand sup...

Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna (in On the Book of Psalms) points out that the mediation mentioned in Psalm 1 (The man who “meditates on [God’s] law day and night”) is “not engaged in meditation and cont...

One of the early saints who emphasized the place of silence in spiritual life was Saint Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who died a martyr late in the first century. In a letter written shortly before his...

Does it matter which God-concept we hold to? Recent brain research by Dr. Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania has documented that all forms of contemplative meditation were associated with posit...

In The God-Shaped Brain , medical doctor Timothy Jennings various aspects of our God-given brains, how they function, and how they can be optimized for a full-life. In this excerpt, he describes the ...

In the first chapter of her book, Get Out of Your Head , author Jennie Allen shares a vulnerable and honest moment from her own life about just how hard it can be to focus in a world of distraction...

Paradoxically, if we wish to become more aware of others and their concerns, there is perhaps no better work we can do than developing self-awareness. Consider the findings of a team of psychologists ...