Acceptable Musing

“Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:13-14 AV)

The underlined phrase is my meditation but I thought including the previous verse was prudent.  The meditation of the heart is that upon which we chose to muse.  Not just our thoughts, but more involved than single thoughts.  The meditation of the heart is that which we allow, becoming an overall theme in our mind.  An obsession of sorts.  That which we cannot get out of our minds and we think upon it from many different angles.  The musing of the heart is a string of ideas, feelings, assumptions, or imaginations that all come together to support a common theme.  These meditations can be a good thing.  We can meditate on the goodness and blessings of God.  We can meditate on the promises of the word of God.  We can meditate on goals or the will of God.  There are good things upon which the heart can muse.  Many others are not good.  Wickedness, fear, or nefarious emotions are not good to muse on.  Our minds are like a gyroscope.  There is potential energy stored up in its mere activity of it.  If it is not held to the center and in balance, it can fly out of control.  As long as the gyroscope is dead center and perfectly balanced, it can spin as fast as it wants and it will stay under control.

The definition of ‘meditation’ is resounding music.  Like a tune that is stuck in your head, meditation is a hard thing to eradicate.  A few weeks ago, I forced my ill-behaving family to watch a Muppets movie.  They all hate the Muppets.  There is something wrong with them!  I knew if I could pick an activity that they would all complain about, they would cease to be ill-behaving and unify around something I liked that they didn’t.  Mission accomplished!  As all of you Muppet fans like me know, at the end of the movie they sang the “Ma-Na-Ma-Na” song. For those who are unfamiliar, the aforementioned lyrics are sung in a bass tone and there is an echo that follows.  “Da-Daaaaaa-Da-Da-Da”.  The echo changes with each echo but the base notes compel an answer.  There is no resolution to the song and it goes on and on.  Sort of like the Llama song.  What is really funny is once this song is stuck in your head, no matter where you are or what you might be doing, all one has to do is sing, “Ma-Na-Ma-Na” and you’re right back on that merry-go-round.  The only way to get that song out of your head is to consciously choose to dwell on something else.  What is stuck in the mind has to be replaced by something else, or it will never leave.

What we muse on is completely our choice.  God is not going to force us to think as we should.  He will not force us to dwell on only the godly.  He will not compel us to meditate only on Him.  This is something we must choose to do.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can choose to either mull in our minds that which only causes more fear, sin, or contempt; or we could fill our thoughts with that which pleases and exalts the LORD.  We are linear thinking beings.  It is impossible to reason two completely unrelated thoughts at the same time.  Therefore, this would stand to reason there is a probability we can change that which we are dwelling upon and meditate on something else.  This is where David understood the battle to be.  He knew his mind was prone to think on things that would neither profit him nor glorify the LORD.  He knew his mind was a powerful tool that had the potential to produce very harmful thoughts.  He also knew it was up to him to discipline it.  Where it starts the desire to please the LORD with our minds.  He asks the LORD that all which his heart and mind might think and meditate upon would meet God’s approval.  One wonders as we wonder if we also pray that that upon which we are wondering meets God’s approval.  Do we stop the musing and ask the LORD to examine that upon which we are musing?  Do we ask the Holy Spirit to guide our thought life to something which the Father would express pleasure?  Do we stop the meditation of we know God would be hurt and seek to replace our thoughts with something God would honor?  The pray above is an important one.  One that we do not pray nearly as much as we should.