Study

Web Meditation 3 March 2009

I've been writing about how we go about loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul. Last week we reflected upon Hope, Compassion, and Forgiveness as characteristics of loving God with all our hearts. Now let us move to loving God with all our minds. I must confess, this is one of my favorite areas to talk about because I love to learn. But if we think for a moment, it shouldn't surprise us that learning about God is a way of loving God. Think about it, when you first met your spouse, partner, or significant something or other the first thing you did was get know them. You learned about them. At first it was simple information, where he or she is from, what they like to do for fun, where they work, their phone number, and so forth. As you progress in the relationship, your learning deepens. You begin to learn who they are as a person, their character, their dreams and hopes, their motivations and joys.

A similar process happens with God. One of the chief ways we learn of God is through the study of the Holy Scriptures. We begin by just getting the great stories in our heads. We gather information. As time moves on we start to get deeper into scripture and not just looking at the surface meaning of any one passage. We begin to see how the parts relate to each other, how the books are constructed to convey meaning. We hear sermons and participate in bible studies to learn from the community tasked with interpreting the bible. We call this community church. Soon we begin to learn about God through learning the traditions of the church as well.

Ultimately we want our purely intellectual study to be integrated with our emotions and our experience. We'll get into those the next few days.

Question for today:
What would you like to know more about in regards to scripture and/or the church?

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This meditation is also posted on the website of the Church of the Resurrection.