A Meditation on Meditation and It's Importance

I thought I would begin blogging with reflections on the nature and importance of meditation. Some of the most pleasurable experiences in my Christian life have been those times when I reflected and meditated on God's thoughts. As the Psalmist said:

NKJ Psalm 139:17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

After gaining and discerning wisdom in Christ after my conversion, I am content to live a quiet life of contemplation and meditation on divine things. When I come to the end of my days, I only hope that I have lived a life of pleasurable divine meditation unto Christlikeness to the glory of the Father. This is the goal of my "Theological Meditations."

Here are some useful quotes:

"Meditation is a particular way of receiving the revealed and dynamic Word of God into the heart from the mind so as to direct the will in the way of God's guidance. It is related to, but not identical with, either intellectual study or prayer."—Peter Toon, From Mind to Heart

Meditation is "that ordinance of Christ, and obedience or duty of a Christian, whereby he acts his spirit into a right pondering of either heavenly and spiritual things, or any other things, in a holy manner, unto spiritual and holy ends and improvements only."—Nathanael Ranew's Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation

"Sometimes the most blessed God himself is the high subject of his meditating; and what transcendencies of thoughts, what raptures, what instances of highest soul transportings hath he this way recorded for us, purposely to put us upon pursuit of the like glimpses and tastes, by suitable first breathings and pantings after sweetest communion with him!"—Nathanael Ranew's Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation

"By meditation I can converse with God, solace myself on the bosom of the Savior, bathe myself in the rivers of divine pleasure, tread the paths of my rest, and view the mansions of eternity."—Anon., in The New Dictionary of Thoughts

"No soul can preserve the bloom and delicacy of its existence without lonely musings and silent prayer, and the greatness of this necessity is in proportion to the greatness of evil."—Farrar, in The New Dictionary of Thoughts

"It is not hasty reading, but seriously meditating upon holy and heavenly truths that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee's touching on the flowers that gathers the honey, but her abiding for a time upon them, and drawing out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian." —Joseph Hall, in The New Dictionary of Thoughts

"It is not the number of books you read, nor the variety of sermons you hear, nor the amount of religious conversation in which you mix, but it is the frequency and earnestness with which you meditate on these things till the truth in them becomes your own and part of your being, that ensures your growth."—F. W. Robertson, in The New Dictionary of Thoughts

"Meditation is that exercise of the mind by which it recalls a known truth, as some kind of creatures do their food, to be ruminated upon till all the valuable parts be extracted."—George Horne, in The New Dictionary of Thoughts