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Prayer and the purpose of Christian meditation

Lynne Baab • Tuesday August 8 2023

I’m going to give you a quotation with words deleted in two places. I’ve marked those two places with X and Y. As you read the quotation, think about what you would put in place of X and Y.

“Christian meditation is the filling of the mind for the purpose of X. It is a means of learning by repeated exposure to the same ideas. It involves study, reflection, and rumination. . . . Christian meditation sees understanding as the product of thinking on whatsoever is virtuous (Phil. 4:8). Christian meditation is not an end in itself but is intended to Y.” —Jen...

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Quotations I love: John Stott on pruning

Lynne Baab • Tuesday May 4 2021

The setting is the Urbana Missionary Conference, and John Stott is speaking daily about the Upper Room Discourse, John 13 to 17. I am a university student who travelled from the Pacific Northwest to Illinois during my Christmas vacation. I sit in that huge arena on the campus at Urbana, captivated by John Stott’s teaching. His exposition of the material in John 14 and 16 about the Holy Spirit completely changes my perspective on the Holy Spirit. Now I understand that the Holy Spirit is not some esoteric, mysterious force, but instead a person who I already know. The Holy Spirit...

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Spiritual diary of sheltering in place: the lifeline of God’s voice through the Bible

Lynne Baab • Thursday April 30 2020

God spoke to me very clearly through scripture last week, and that wonderful (and challenging) moment got me thinking about how and when God has spoken to me very clearly and specifically through a passage in the Bible. The kind of directness and clarity I experienced last week has happened before – many times before – and I wish I could quantify it. An average of weekly? No, probably not that often, although at least weekly something from the Bible is helpful and relevant, and of course that is a form of God speaking to me.

I’m thinking of those direct and...

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Connections between the Bible and prayer: Sensory prayer in Revelation

Lynne Baab • Thursday November 1 2018

Through my childhood, in Episcopal and Anglican churches, incense played a role on special occasions. The priest would walk down the center aisle swinging a chain with a metal ball on the end. Inside the ball, incense was burning, and the smoke came out of cleverly shaped holes in the ball.

As I child, I was never sure if I liked the weird smell of incense. But it definitely signaled something about holiness to me.

Fast forward fifty-some years to the ordination of my colleague, James, to the Anglican priesthood. The ordination was held at St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Dunedin, New Zealand,...

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