Remembering and Meditating
God gave us a wonderful gift when He made us so that we can remember the things that happen in our lives. Of course, some memories are very good, while others are not so good. However, we can learn from all of them. In fact, we might even be able to learn more from the painful memories than the very joyful ones. We also have memories of things that happened to us which we don't fully comprehend, but we need to meditate on those things, asking God to show us just what we need to see in them.
That is what the Bible tells us that Jesus' mother, Mary, did after Jesus's birth and the visit of the shepherds. (Luke 2:18,19) "All who heard the shepherd's story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often." Just try to put yourself in Mary's place. She had just given birth to the Messiah of Israel, and shepherds showed up telling her about the angels appearing to them announcing His birth. I imagine she experienced every emotion from excitement to fear to confusion, so she stopped to remember and meditate on these things often. We can learn much from this.
We have all encountered God in various ways in our lives. We have heard from Him while we were at church or as we read the Bible. We have had times when we felt His presence and His power. We may not have understood fully what He was saying or what was happening, but the worst thing we can do is just to dismiss these memories and not think about them. God is revealing Himself to all of us, and we need to receive His revelation and put our trust in Him as the One True God and Jesus, as our Lord and Savior.
The thing that will help us get to that point in our lives is spending time meditating on what we have read or heard from the Lord and from other people who were telling us about Him. As we take time to meditate, God sees our willingness to consider Him and His truth. He will reach out to us even more when He sees our openness to Him and His Word. Again, the worst thing we can do is just read the Bible and never meditate on it, or to go to church and forget what we have heard as soon as we leave. We need to be like Mary and remember and think often about all these things.
Tomorrow, I intend to read Luke 3-7.