Preamble from Kent. . . . I had some ‘glitches’ which kept me from posting and I was about to give up but then the normal options came available again. So I’ll continue to post, typically on Sundays and Wednesdays.
From the book "The Power of Stillness", under the above title:
Rather than living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of our heads, Christians seek to live “by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God” ” (Matthew 4:4). That means making it a priority to spend time in the texts we believe contains God’s words and His will. But as important as scripture is to the followers of Christ, the reality is our times with those words is subject to the very same challenges we’ve explored in the preceding chapters when it comes to prayer and Sabbath worship: wandering, noisy minds; an inner sense of drivenness to get-things-done; and outer distractions that can fill any bit of reading we attempt.
As a result reading the scriptures—individually and even more so as a family group—can become distracting, draining and even an empty experience. And who in heaven’s name (and even with heavens command) would want to keep doing that? Like empty prayer or empty church worship, an impoverished practice of scripture reading can be easy to leave behind without sensing that we’ve lost much at all (“why waste time on something that’s not doing anything for me?!”) Rather than simply walking away from scripture, however, what if we could recognize the way in which we are walking away from a depleted experience of scripture? And what would it take to more deeply, powerfully, intimately experience His words, rather than just letting some words occasionally pass over our minds? Said another way, what would it look like to prioritize having an experience with God in the scriptures, rather just getting it done?
The Mindful Practice Called Scripture Study
Reading a text presents a unique opportunity for another challenging but rewarding mindful practice. That may sound strange, especially given how accustomed we’ve been all the way back to early training, to think of reading as largely about comprehension: Hmmm, those letters mean “cat.” Sacred reading involves more than simply identifying definitions of words, though; it’s also interpreting the meaning of those words: what does that mean for me right now?
And that’s where all of this starts to get really fun. It’s one thing to understand what Isiah’s words mean for Babylon of his day, and another to consider their general meaning for our day. But it is a whole other level to find out what meaning God might want you to take away here and now—or even better, to feel God’s actual presence in inspired words that touch you.
No longer just you and a blank page, this is an encounter with God’s words and God’s own Spirit in this very moment of your life. Thus, as Dallin H. Oaks taught, “We do not overstate the point when we say the scriptures can be a Urim and Thummin to assist each of us to receive personal revelation.”1
This is all quite different from the way we often speak of scripture—as if it is more like a chemistry textbook and our task is to figure out what everything means. This is more enjoyable than chemistry too!
To deeply experience God’s word in this fashion, a little more stillness and silence can go a long way—along with slowing down enough to stay deeply present to the words. Joseph Smith was encouraged to let the solemnities of eternity rest upon you reminds” (Doctrine and Covenants 43:34). And after five months in Liberty jail, the Prophet himself reflected, “The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out.”2
Still feeling unsteady or unsure you’re up to hearing God’s voice in the scriptures? Here’s where all that mindfulness guidance from previous chapters can help, such as: bringing back the wandering mind, accepting discomfort that arises, paying attention to to what’s going on in the body, and so on. And when confusion arises, or you’re just not sure you’re understanding fully, that’s not a problem either.
Not-Knowing is Not Scary
Latter-day Saints recognize that, rather than an aberration in God’s plan, lack of knowing is a central and defining feature of mortal experience. Yes it’s somewhat counter-intuitive that to become like God we have to leave His side in the cosmos and become ignorant infants, 100 percent dependent on other limited humans. How fascinating to know, as God knows, we must experience mortality through the tiny lens of our own subjective bodies, and limited context, without clear view of our eternal past. But the reality is, in order for us to spiritually progress, we had to forget everything we knew in the premortal life and dive intentionally, knowingly, into the daunting embrace of not-knowing.
Rather than seeing this lack of certainty as a sign of failure, our faith community acknowledges this as a crucial context within which our agency is preserved. In this world “one is always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial.” Terryl and Fiona Givens note, “The things that “tip[s] the scale,” they suggest, is the fact that each individual is “truly free to choose belief or skepticism, faith of faithfulness.”3
In comparison, imagine if God made crystal clear His will to all mankind—whether they wanted it or not. That would change things and not in a good way. Remarkably, it’s the lack of clarity, the confusion and the slow progression to knowing (from constantly changing states of not knowing) that our growth and learning happens—and our freedom to direct our lives is preserved! ~~~Jacob Z. Hess, Carrie L. Skarda, Kyle D. Anderson, Ty R. Mansfield, The Power of Stillness (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 2019) p.78-80
