What Is Biblical Meditation?
by Jason Carr
I remember hearing exactly one sermon on Biblical meditation before I left home for college. I’ll never forget how it was explained to me. I was told that meditation is like when a cow “chews the cud.”
A cow is what’s called a ruminant, which means it has a specialized stomach with a compartment called the rumen. When it eats, it doesn’t fully chew its food at first. It swallows it quickly, and the food goes into the rumen for initial breakdown. Later, the cow brings that partially digested food back up. This is called cud. Then it chews it again, slower and more thoroughly, before swallowing it again for deeper digestion and absorption. Gross. But let’s continue.
If you haven’t already guessed, this is where we get the word ruminate. Ruminate, in its original usage, simply described the process I just illustrated. In our day, ruminate refers to overthinking, spiraling, or being trapped in your own thoughts. It’s chewing on thoughts without swallowing, fully processing, or being nourished by them.
What’s interesting is that ruminate has become a negative word. Why? Because most of us don’t chew on truth. We chew on fear, anxiety, and regret. So the word took on the shape of our habits.
In explaining meditation, I often tell people, you know how to meditate. You do it most days. Meditation is simply what your mind already does. It loops. So the question is not whether you meditate, but what you meditate on. You don’t need to learn how to meditate. You need to change your diet.
Biblical Meditation Vs. Eastern and Mindfulness
It’s also important to note that biblical meditation is different from eastern meditation practices. Eastern meditation is the practice of quieting the mind and focusing inward, often by letting go of thoughts, in order to experience stillness, awareness, or unity with ultimate reality.
Then there is the diluted and secularized version of this called “Mindfulness Meditation.” It does not seek a unity with ultimate reality common to eastern meditation practices, but helps people to be more present in every moment. And though there are some proven therapeutic benefits to both eastern and mindfulness meditation, those practices stand in stark contrast to biblical meditation.
In Biblical mediation, we do not seek to empty ourselves, but to become full and nourished by God’s word. It is not enough to empty ourselves of bad things if we do not fill ourselves with good things. Remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 12:43-45:
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
What Does Meditation Do?
There is a steady call in the Psalms to delight in and meditate on God’s word day and night. Psalm 1, which sets the tone for the entire book, describes the person who does this:
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers (Psalm 1:3).”
Meditation is not merely a heady exercise. It’s not the same as study, though study matters. Meditation presses God’s word down into the heart. It reshapes how you parent, serve your spouse, love your neighbor, work, rest, and even drive in traffic. It changes everything because it changes you.
Why? Because you are what you eat.
Much of your spiritual and emotional life is downstream from what you consistently take in. You already know how to meditate. Your mind is always chewing on something. The question is what you’re feeding it. Change your diet, and you will change your life.