A follow on to last week’s post – Something Old Something New

I don’t think we are very good at gazing. Well I know I’m not. Too often I’m doing too many things at once and when my focus is on one thing it is rarely the sort of thing you can gaze at.

To gaze: To look steadily and intently, especially in admiration, surprise or thought.

The puritan, John Owen wrote about seeking the face of Christ.

In contrast so often I find myself seeking the end of my to do list, or the bottom of the washing basket or the completion of some preparation. Like the hotel cleaner my head is down, the clock is ticking and the view goes unheeded.

What is it that stops us gazing?

Fear?

Do we have such a strong suspicion of practices of meditation that are less than biblical, that are more influenced by eastern religion than by Scripture that we are walking away from what we are commanded to do in Scripture?? 

Fear of what will happen if we stop doing? In other words an element of pride? 

Fear of not knowing how to do it or of trying it and it not ‘working’? 

Laziness/Inertia?

Bizarrely stopping can be harder work than keeping going!   

Disdain?

Contempt for anything too familiar, or passe?

And so we miss out! We miss out on daily revelling in the glorious gospel, we miss out on exploring the bottomless love of God, we miss out on enjoying the beauty of our Lord and saviour, we do battle with the new without equipping ourselves with the old, the unchanging constant.

And do we as a result end up talking more about Christianity than about Christ? Do we speak more of what we have discovered in a bible passage than how God spoke to us in his word as we encountered him there? Does what we read quickly get lost like a piece of paper in an overly full intray because we don’t spend the time and the love on fixing it in our minds and hearts, filing it carefully so that we can access it with ease?