Tim Tschida: The Garden of Scripture, A Storm of Perfection

Read Tim Tschida’s Introduction to The Garden of Scripture

 

The Garden of Scripture

A Storm of Perfection

 

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.
—Saint Gregory of Nyssa

 

Growing up in Minnesota, experiencing thunderstorms was common. I can genuinely say that I enjoyed most of them for one reason or another. Sometimes, when I tell that to others, they give me a strange look, but I never let it bother me. As a child, I particularly enjoyed the storms I could see far in the distance. One of the cool things about living on the northern plains is that the land is level enough so that a person can see storms that are miles away. For whatever reason, my parents told me the lightning we could see from those storms in the distance was called “heat lightning,” which never entirely made sense to me but added to their mystique. Those storms always seemed to strike at dusk and in the deepest part of summer. There was just enough light left in the sky that when lightning illuminated the cloud, it took on a curious orangish-white marbled quality that clashed with the deeper blue parts of the thunderhead. Gazing upon those storms in the distance was like looking into a different world; it was great for inspiring the imagination.

The thunderstorms I usually preferred, however, were the ones that directly impacted us, especially the ones that hit at night. They were never dull. In these storms, one of the main things I enjoyed was how one bolt could light up the surrounding darkness. For the briefest instant, when the lightning struck, I could see every detail of my neighborhood almost as clearly as in the day.

Those childhood memories got put on the back burner. As I moved across the country to the East Coast, thunderstorms were less frequent, and my attention turned to creating and facing my own inner storms. Eventually, I would give my life over to Christ, get married, move to the Southeastern United States, get called into ministry, and go to college and seminary to study theology. With my arrival in the South came the return of natural thunderstorms, ones that, if I can be honest, are terrifying because cloud–to–ground lightning is more common. And trees are everywhere, frequently knocked down by heavy rain and bursts of wind. But they did bring back the memories of watching the lightning illuminate everything.

Then God did something that would make storms relevant in a way I never imagined; he showed me Psalm 119:105. The verse says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” When I say that God showed it to me, I’m not saying I wasn’t aware of the verse; it was a popular worship song when I was a kid and was commonly used as a memory verse in Sunday school. What I mean is that God illuminated it when I studied it in Hebrew. The word for light in Hebrew, Or, can mean lightning. Finding that out immediately brought me back to my childhood memory of seeing my surroundings lit up. It revealed to me that the light God provides through his word doesn’t just allow us to see a few steps before us but can illuminate our path almost entirely.

As good as that is, lightning is only temporary. Its clarity lasts for a second, and everything goes dark again. When it comes to the direction our lives should go, the major decisions we make, or even the everyday situations we face, we can make the case that we need this type of illumination from God, however brief it is. If we return to Psalm 119:105, God has much more light to give us. Or does not just mean the brightness that a flash of lightning offers. The word also denotes the light at daybreak, the full light of the sun, and the light of glory, and is even linked to the pillar of fire that Israelites followed coming out of Egypt.

The imagery of lightning and fire almost seems counterintuitive because they are destructive forces, but God is Lord over them and can use those powerful elements. Yahweh himself appeared to the Israelites as a terrifying dark cloud containing lightning and fire. In his ominous interaction with Israel, however, God gave them his Instruction, the Torah, that showed Israel how to love and honor him and each other’s lives (Exod 19:16–19), and that’s why Or also means the light of life. The overall lesson from Psalm 119:105 is that the light God provides through Scripture is supposed to be stable and consistently shining, leading to a life of love, joy, and eagerness.^[1]

Little things like the Hebrew word for light demonstrate how God’s word is perfect. In Evangelical Christianity, we have a strange relationship with that sentiment. By expressing that the Bible is perfect, we usually mean that it is without error and sum it up with a doctrine called Biblical Inerrancy. But that is such a limited view of perfection for Scripture. The Old and New Testaments are perfect not because they don’t make errors but because they are the perfect collection of books that speak to humanity’s need for salvation. Then it is perfect for speaking to every situation we face because it speaks to the root issues of what causes those situations, doesn’t offer a solution found in ourselves, and mainly because it reveals Christ. The little word Or implies that our light and lives are sourced and sustained by a perfect God.
Meditative Reading

Our perfect God is willing to give us as much light on his Word as we are eager to ask for, and we should ask. Sometimes, though, I think God nudges us in unexpected ways. He gives us seemingly perfect moments to reflect on. These perfect moments are typically not easy to define until an individual experiences them, and they are subjective. Perhaps your moment is hearing the first cry of your just-born child or the moment your spouse said “I do” at the altar, or maybe when you realized what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. Whatever those moments are, whenever they do happen, they are engrained in your memory forever.

My moment occurred with my family in the car as we traveled to work and school in the middle of a severe thunderstorm. There was a stretch of road we traveled every day, culminating at a four-way stop. While the drive is ordinarily pleasant because of the surrounding scenery, something more beautiful happened. A strange, otherworldly anxiety, not of impending calamity, but one filled with what I can only describe as awe-filled, began to build in me. The deep-dark color of the sky, the sound of the pounding rain, the lightning, the large trees that lined the sidewalk, and the light from the headlights of cars and small buildings all collided into one of the most beautiful scenes that ever graced my eyes. The moment seemed to freeze in time, and I can only describe it as perfect. And it enchanted my socks off! I’ve wondered if God was trying to communicate something through what I saw. The only thing I could think of at the time was that he could see me and wanted me to know it. Whatever the case is, it haunts me, and if I am being honest, I want it to haunt me for the rest of my life.

In an important way, I believe the practice of meditating on Scripture can be described as a haunting of God’s Word that won’t let you go until you spend time with it. Or, at least, maybe that’s how we should treat it. When I was a child in the 1980s and ’90s, the word meditation certainly would have had a similar connotation with haunting because of its affiliation with Eastern spirituality and New Age practices. However, I have seen the Christian form of meditation become more widely accepted in churches that honor it as a practice within the historical church. But with us having built a society where instant gratification can be met on demand, I wonder if meditation is lacking in the lives of many believers. With so many ways to distract ourselves to prevent us from reflecting, is it any wonder that biblical literacy has significantly declined?

Whenever it’s done well, however, meditating on Scripture leads to powerful insights that we read about in some of our favorite classic Christian books, such as The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster describes the practice of meditation as the “ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word” out of a desire to fellowship with God.^[2] Foster pulls from the Bible to note the importance of meditating on Scripture by highlighting the word’s use in Psalm 119, where David declares, “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long” (119:97) along with other Old Testament appearances.^[3] In meditating on God’s word, David found his wisdom had increased significantly and that he could sense his Lord’s sweetness, which we don’t often take the time to comprehend (119:103). This mirrors the church father Jerome’s account of his friend Marcella saying, “whatever in us was gathered by long study and by lengthy meditation was almost changed into nature; this she tasted, this she learned, this she possessed.”^[4] As a result, when Jerome left his station, Marcella was sought as an authority when issues of Scriptural interpretation arose.^[5] So, in a biblical context, meditation doesn’t require us to empty our minds or detach ourselves from reality, but it invites us to fill our minds with God’s truth to attach ourselves more deeply to him.^[6]

Something palpable happens to us after we begin meditating on God’s Word; Scripture starts to haunt us. Theologian and educator Cheryl Bridges Johns laments that in this modern age, Scripture doesn’t keep people up at night, nor does it seem to fill their days with “images and stories.”^[7] To cope with that, Johns notices that modern society, Christian or secular, has found alternatives to enchant themselves through popular media or activities driven by lust and has become disenchanted with Scripture. And so, instead, we let a plethora of other harmful things haunt us. With my whole breath, however, I would argue that what the Bible offers us, especially in the revelation of Christ, is beautiful beyond comprehension. We should let such beauty haunt us instead of pain and regret, and it is a shame when we consider the latter more real and tangible than the inhabiting of the Spirit and Word within us. I believe, however, that intentional (which is just a buzzword that means to do something on purpose) meditation is one way to alleviate the issues Johns raises.

Going back to the scene that haunts me, I truthfully am not sure why I had the reaction that I did. It could have been a beautiful sight, not something God was using, except that it led up to a weekend that produced a fantastic amount of freedom in me. Perhaps the Almighty showed me that he can work through anything to show us his glory, and he knows how much I desire to glorify him. So, in meditating on the moment that I experienced, I realized that God used different ingredients to create a masterpiece, or at least to help me see his masterpiece that is creation. I then realized that Scripture can be understood in the same way.

But what do I mean by that? Out of contemplation will hopefully come the understanding that Scripture is multifaceted. Each line of Scripture tends to link to other portions of Scripture, forming a connective tissue we banally call themes. If we begin to comprehend specific themes, things like the nature of God’s love, faith, the beauty and glory of God’s Kingdom, other biblical riches begin to accurately take shape in our hearts and minds. Although the Apostle Paul promises us we’ll see through a mirror darkly until Christ’s return (1 Cor 13:12), the picture God is communicating to readers of Scripture can become more apparent in meditation.

When the Bible’s messages become visible, it’s easier to become swept up in its narrative. That is a good thing and arguably what God wants. A common belief among Christians in the West is that we must interpret God’s word objectively so that we don’t insert our own experience into the text; that would be something called eisegesis. However, the unintentional effect of objectivism is that faith becomes an intellectual ascent rather than one that permeates a person’s whole self. That is a problem since God is after a person’s entire being. Consider Moses’ command to the Israelites, saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5), a command that Jesus echoes in Matthew 22. A question we can ask is, if we believe the God revealed in the Bible is powerful enough to create the universe, is he powerful enough to transform us through reading his word?

Several significant figures throughout the Bible suggest the answer to the question we just asked is yes. One prominent person is the Old Testament leader Joshua. Guess how Joshua says transformation through the Word should happen? He says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night,” and in doing so, it will allow us to act in accordance with what it says (Josh 1:8). We must also remember the context of Joshua to understand the significance of how meditating on Scripture can impact the whole person. Joshua had inherited from Moses the role of leading Israel into the promised land of Canaan. He led the Israelites in battle after battle against kingdoms who thought it was perfectly fine to sacrifice children to their gods to receive a fertile growing season. We know this because Moses gives commands to the Israelites, saying:

When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. (Deuteronomy 18:9–12)

The kind of thinking and practice of those pagan nations is symbolic of a fallen world. To change such a way of living, the Israelites weren’t just required to “know the rules” but to embody the word of God, which would lead to their prosperity and even the prosperity of their neighbors. It’s not so different for Christians in this day and age. Despite Christ inaugurating his Kingdom, we still live in a fallen world and have societies steeped in destructive sin. If meditation could significantly aid the ancient Israelites, we who serve the same God can also benefit.

Although meditation has a profoundly spiritual connotation, many can be turned off by the word or become intimidated. There was and is a long tradition of meditation within the church, often called Contemplative Christianity, a term that can sometimes be code for Christian Mysticism. Like meditation, mysticism can be a polarizing word in some parts of the church because there are other forms of mysticism in different cultures and religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Historically, the church has been enriched by Christian mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, The Desert Fathers (St. Anthony) and Mothers, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, and many others. Most of the men and women listed lived a monastic life. They dedicated themselves to Christian meditation and other Christian disciplines because it allowed them to be fully devoted to God. Their writings have catapulted them into legendary status with lasting influence.

Yet, if Tim, a close friend of mine who owns a landscaping business, does it while mowing a yard, surely we don’t all have to be monks and nuns at a monastery. For Tim, meditation is about asking the Holy Spirit questions about Scripture; a fantastic one that he returns to often is the question of what happened on the cross. One could argue that Tim’s question is answered directly in the pages of the four gospels. That is true, but meditation is less about seeing what’s on the pages and more about dwelling on what the pages reveal, so it’s what happens after we see it. That is because the “central goal of Christian mysticism is to experience the ineffable splendors of the mutual indwelling of the soul in Christ,” as implied by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1:20.^[8] The Spirit who inspired the living word invites us to seek with our own spirits the depth of God’s communion with us.

We don’t have to be monks, priests, pastors, or Apostles to participate in such a communion; we need the willingness to hear God. We will know we’ve listened to God when we’ve become more obedient to him and find ourselves growing in the fruit of the Spirit. In his book on the spiritual disciplines, though, Foster laments that people always expect others to speak to God for them as if they prefer to have secondhand knowledge of him.^[9] Returning to the story of Yahweh speaking from the mountain in fire, smoke, and lightning, we find that we’re not all dissimilar from the Israelites who requested a mediator between themselves and Yahweh because they thought they’d die (Deut 5:22–27). But we serve a God who wants us to have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10b). The only mediator we need is Christ Jesus, and he happens to be God who reigns in our hearts and asks us to abide in him (John 15:4–10).

Also, consider this: the Hebrew word for meditate, hagita, means “to mutter” or to “say under the breath,” which brings a kind of lightness to the practice. There is a reason for muttering. Since most Israelites learned God’s word orally, it only makes sense that lingering on it would also be verbal itself. So, those who meditated on the Law would walk around or perform their duties while muttering Scripture under their breath in the process of understanding. Lots of us mutter under our breath, and usually, it’s by saying something passive-aggressive. Imagine, though, if we instead directed our thoughts and words towards understanding a verse or a passage we long to comprehend. I believe it would bring significant change to our lives and compel us to do it more and more as we seek to commune with God and obey him.
How To Meditate On Scripture As A Christian

So, how does a Christian meditate on their Bible readings? In this section, I’m supposed to offer several tips on how to improve your contemplative life. The fact is that it is difficult to flesh out concretely. The Bible, of course, is primary. Having the verse or passage fresh in our minds helps the process significantly as we seek to ask and dwell on its meaning. Richard Foster, who I mentioned earlier, writes about developing an interior life aided by time, place, and posture.^[10] Time is crucial because we have the physical and the emotional competing with the spiritual. The place is significant because it might be impossible to get a moment’s peace depending on our environment. Posture also impacts us because we can’t think or reflect well if we’re uncomfortable.

I agree with Foster. I often meditate on Scripture when I’m alone and have ambient music playing while sitting at my desk with the blinds open so I can see my yard. That being said, I’ve also meditated when doing the dishes, cutting the grass, or vacuuming. Anything that relies on muscle memory, or a “mindless activity,” frees our minds to focus on what we’ve read and be receptive to the Spirit of God. Notice here, too, in all these instances, as well as what Foster suggests, that I am wide awake. I like to think of meditating as studying in that it’s a process of learning, and I’m giving it the kind of attention needed to study well. It’s probably not impossible to meditate on Scripture lying in bed, but it’s less fruitful because of the temptation to doze off. Additionally, in times of meditation, you may want to write down the verse or passage so that you can come back later and add anything that God has shown you or if any of your other readings have contributed to your understanding.
Getting Results?

So far, I have described meditation as seeking answers and communing with God. We do this expecting that God will speak to us in return. But when can we expect an answer or see results? Whenever. I mentioned above that I, and others, have meditated during purposeful times or when doing mindless tasks. God also spoke to me in those times by impressing a thought that directly addressed what I was searching for in meditation. However, God has also spoken to me while I was in the middle of teaching my students. As I was writing The Fruit That Turns The World Upside Down, I’d been doing a lot of meditative reading. While teaching my high school students about the flood in Genesis, a thought literally popped into my head about how the flood metaphorically applies to our lives before we meet Christ and how Christ’s peace changes the effect of water to sanctify us.^[11] I believe I said, “holy smokes,” out loud while writing on the marker board. All that to say, I wasn’t expecting such a thought at that time.

If our meditation is truly about God, I believe he also gives us a way to confirm it. Countless times after meditation, questions have formed in my mind about God and what he says in his Word, and numerous times, that question was answered via a pastor’s sermon or perhaps something another Christian said, and usually in the same week. It is vital to confirm what we’re getting from meditation so we don’t slip into false beliefs and share erroneous things outside the bounds of Scripture. We need to heed John’s words to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Nevertheless, if we’re receptive to God, he will bless us in his timing, which, by our standards, may happen whenever.

We love mysteries, but more than that, we love solving puzzles. One of my favorite mystery-solving television series was Luther, starring Idris Elba, because it’s not Sherlock Holmes but is still set in London. As a detective, Luther faces off against some very dangerous and brilliant foes, especially Alice Morgan, but he always manages to crack the case. Part of what I love about mystery shows is misdirection. When the viewer thinks they’ve figured out who’s done it, the detective reveals who actually did the crime, and there is closure. Some people take the same approach when meditating on Scripture as if the rest of the church is getting specific passages wrong, but their meditation reveals what the Bible is really saying. We are not Gnostics who try to “unlock” secret truths in the Bible or who eschew our physical lives for a solely spiritual life. While Christian meditation involves a person’s mind and spirit, the practice rests in the God present in both Testaments. Through meditation, we embrace the tension of mystery, understanding that God may reveal some parts but not all.

It is like The Big Bang Theory episode called “The Closure Alternative.” In the episode, one of the main characters, Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), is upset about his favorite show being canceled on a cliffhanger. Sensing his obsession with closure in many other parts of his life and thinking he needs to re-condition his mind, Sheldon’s girlfriend, Amy (Mayim Bialik), arranges a series of activities for him to complete but prevents him from completing each task just before he can finish. By the end of the night, Sheldon claims that her experiment worked and confesses, albeit somewhat falsely, that he doesn’t need the closure he sought.^[12]

There are vast differences, of course. God’s story is not a sitcom, and he’s not devising things for us and pulling the rug out from under us before we finish. However, God wants us to recondition our minds and form us, and he even wants us to be content with never knowing everything. For example, we may never understand completely the mystery of the Trinity. Yet, through meditation, we may see more and more how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interact in Scripture.

Mystery is beneficial for our minds. Why shouldn’t we want to let our minds hold God and his love in awe and wonder? Because those two states of being lead to feeling overwhelmed, people often avoid such a crucial time of reflection. As the Norwegian Educator Paul Martin Opdal observes, awe and “Wonder…always points to something beyond the accepted rules.”^[13] That can be daunting, especially in the context of religion, where there are “rules” to prevent us from sliding into unorthodox beliefs. Yet, multiple times in Scripture, we are told that being in awe and wonder of God is more than acceptable. Opdal notes that wonder gives us “an inkling that there is more to it that tradition admits, and that this ‘more’ can be investigated.”^[14] The “more” can be described as the theology beyond denominational doctrine that can sometimes be too reductive in how it discusses God and what he does.

Therefore, meditation can and does serve as a direct link to awe and wonder. In fact, we could say that meditation allows us to dive into the depths, swim in the mysteries Scripture presents, and enjoy that God is wholly other than us and who makes us whole.
What Meditation On Scripture Isn’t

The spiritual practice of Christian meditation is not a trend either. Trends depend on the consensus of popularity and are driven by influencers. For example, at the time of this writing, it is 2023, and a famous haircut from the early 1990s, the mullet, is gaining popularity because of some musicians and professional athletes. God willing, the trend will die out again, too. Although Christian spiritual practices have ebbed and flowed within the church for the last two thousand years, and some believers have promoted spirituality for their own benefit, practices such as meditation are a core component of the faith. As I have already demonstrated, meditation has been part of biblical faith since its inception, with its first appearance in Genesis 24:63. For Christians, intentional practice within the church was emphasized in the patristic period, if not before. Christopher Hall writes:

The [church] fathers never split theology off from spirituality, as though theology was an academic, mental exercise best practiced in one’s study, while Christian spirituality was more appropriately focused on the heart and centered in a church sanctuary. Any split between mind and heart, theology and spirituality, study and sanctuary would have been met with scant toleration from the fathers.^[15]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer utilized meditation as well. A commonly shared quote from him states, “Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian.”^[16] That is because Bonhoeffer believed it to be an excellent way to tame the flesh, the fallen nature that tries daily to creep up in believers and distracts us from forming good Christian discipleship.^[17] He knew that our spirits are all too willing to follow the path of discipleship, but the flesh is “fearful,” causing us to create distractions and excuses as to why we can’t grow in our love toward God and our neighbor.^[18] Carving out time for meditating on Scripture is a practical discipline for our faith as we humbly submit ourselves to “move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the word of God.”^[19]

Lastly, meditation is not for our self-elevation and self-promotion. Social media can sometimes be a great place for Christians. Through it, I’ve gained a lot of relationships with people that wouldn’t be possible without the platforms. On the other hand, social media is also rife with temptation, which includes the temptation to appear more pious than everyone else. With the surge of re-discovering the patristic and medieval period of Christianity in Evangelicalism, one of my worries is that some believers would co-opt the spiritual practices and theology of the church fathers and lord it over others who were less informed or use their spiritual practices to skirt moral and ethical issues Scripture warns against. We do not have to look too far to see examples. However, the flaunting of Christian spirituality and its misappropriation makes it void. Meditation done well should drive our pretensions away rather than enable them. Therefore, the more we meditate on the Word, the more it can be mapped over our lives since the practice’s goal is the application of Scripture. In short, meditation helps us decrease as Christ increases.

 

PR

 

This chapter is an excerpt from Tim Tschida’s forthcoming book, The Garden of Scripture. Used with permission.

 

Coming Next from Tim Tschida: “Illusions And Fullness”

 

Notes

[1] Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, 161–162.

[2] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 21. Foster dedicates a whole chapter to the discipline of meditation and deftly cites Scripture to support its use in the Christian life while dispelling misconceptions of the practice.

[3] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 20.

[4] Jerome, Epistle 108, CSEL 55.334, as quoted in Hall, Scripture with the Church Fathers, 44–45.

[5] Jerome, Epistle 108.

[6] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 25.

[7] Johns, Re-Enchanting The Text, 3.

[8] McColman, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, 50.

[9] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 28.

[10] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 31–33.

[11] Tim Tschida, The World Upside Down, 13–14. In the end of the first chapter, I link God separating the waters of chaos in Genesis 1 to God flooding the world in Genesis 6 because our sin seems to desire chaos, so God gave the chaos they wanted by giving them the flood waters. In this day and age, the chaos caused by sin can flood our lives, and God lets us experience that.

[12] Lorre, The Big Bang Theory.

[13] Opdal, “Curiosity, Wonder, and Education,” 331.

[14] Opdal, “Curiosity, Wonder, and Education,” 331.

[15] Hall, Theology With The Church Fathers, 10.

[16] Bonhoeffer, Meditating On The Word, 22.

[17] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 159.

[18] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 159.

[19] Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word, 22.

Tags: bible, bible reading, garden, perfection, scripture, scriptures, storm, tschida

Category: Biblical Studies, Winter 2025