‘The medicine of meditation’

STUDY

THE single most important thing we need in reading Scripture is imagination.

The Bible, our sacred and holy text, is truly a doorway into the Divine if we let its potent and suggestive phrases, its word pictures, fill our souls with colour and possibilities.

The written word of God, because it is the word of God, is eternally fertile; new insights emerge with each passing generation.

Of all the books in the world the Bible has the widest margins: space on every page for our God-inspired imagination.

Let us take ourselves to the place beyond the wilderness, to Horeb, the mountain of God. It was only after Moses had journeyed through the wilderness that he found the mountain of God, the Holy of Holies, the place where he would encounter the Divine (Exodus 3). This is biblical mythology at its best. What does it mean to journey through the wilderness or arrive at that place beyond the wilderness?

The most important journey in life is the inner journey. It is in the heart, the soul, the consciousness, that we grow, mature and change; that we face our demons and, having journeyed beyond that wilderness, encounter the mystery and emptiness of the Eternal. Horeb is in the heart: yours and mine.

Gaze into the story. Once on the mountain, an angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of a bush. Moses looked: the bush was blazing but not yet consumed. He said: ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up’. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has said that when Moses stood to behold the burning bush, it was a miracle but, asks Kushner, what was the miracle? The rabbi replies that the miracle was not in the fire or in the bush or the fact that the bush was not consumed:

‘The miracle at the burning bush was that Moses stopped and turned aside to notice’. In the scorching heat of the desert, a bush on fire was not so unusual. It is only when Moses stops and turns aside he truly sees a great sight; it is only when he has stopped, when he is still, silent before this mystical vision, that he hears the voice of God address him.

He could so easily have failed to pay attention.

It was with the inner eye, the eye of the heart, that Moses encountered Eternity.

In sound and syllable unknown to the outer ear, Moses heard the voice of God. Having turned aside, entranced, in the place in his heart beyond the wilderness, Moses removed his sandals for he had stepped on to holy ground, uniting soul to Soul.

The central task of the Church is to facilitate encounter with the Sacred and to nourish spiritual sensitivity, so that when we pass by the burning bush in our lives we are receptive to its presence and, with patience, stop and gaze. We are more than an NGO working for social justice, though that be a vital expression of our love, of Jesus’ love within us. We can and should be evangelical about gazing into Scripture and learn afresh the medicine of meditation, the eloquence of spiritual silence. The miracle is that Moses stopped.

The Rev Scott McKenna is minister at Edinburgh: Mayfield Salisbury.

This article appears in the June 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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