The 21st century is witness to an information revolution not seen since the invention of the printing press. The challenge for Christians today, faced with vast amounts of images, news feeds, social media and web surfing, is to keep all these secondary to God’s Word.
Daily time with the Word of God is vital in these days of competing demands upon us. Christian meditation is undoubtedly the key to this. The Puritans provide a wonderful gateway to a practical and fruitful understanding of the discipline of Christian meditation. Joel Beeke is an eminent advocate of the Puritans and in this booklet uses his extensive experience of these giants of the faith to great benefit.
In just 41 pages he gives an excellent primer to a life-long exercise of dwelling upon the triune God through biblical meditation. Puritan preacher and writer Thomas Watson is prominently quoted, as this superlative teacher provides a brilliant guide to biblical meditation in A treatise concerning meditation.
Puritan-era men, such as Richard Baxter, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Manton and Oliver Heywood, also feature in this well researched booklet; it essentially distils the chapter on this subject from Puritan theology, edited by Mark Jones and Joel Beeke.
An apposite quotation from Thomas Brooks will help readers appreciate the blessing of biblical meditation: ‘It is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower, which gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower, which draws out the sweet. It is not he who reads most but he who meditates most, who will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian’.
Paul Irving
Sheffield
