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Communion Meditations (2022)

 

Repetition

Originally scheduled for May 22

One of the things to notice about the Old Testament law is that it is not organized in the same way that laws and statutes of our time are organized. If you look at our statute books you can easily see that they are designed to allow someone to look up a particular ordinance. Old Testament law was designed to be memorized by repetition. (Remember, verse numbers associated with text in the Bible came along about 1500 years after Christ.)

 

Sincere repetition carries with it a number of benefits.

The primary one is that repetition turns learning into habit. The repetition become so ingrained in your thought process that you can repeat it in your sleep. More importantly, you understand it well enough to repeat to others around you. What once was just repetition now is habit of learned knowledge.

Next, once you get past the basics, your subject is open to mental exploration. When you have the basics you can be curious about the rest. This means that the knowledge in question is being stretched to accommodate the limits of your brain. Some of us have very large brain boundaries, and this can be quite the delight.

Finally, if the subject is important enough, you learn to dwell on it because you find what you have learned has become so valuable. It is a joy to contemplate it.

 

Of course, there is the cheap imitation of sincere repetition. It’s called “going through the motions.” In spiritual things, this is the cheap fraud that Satan tries to sell you instead of the sincerity of repetition.

This is most noticed by the fact that it is a physical activity only. You know how to go through the steps and make it look good. That’s where you stop, before any real benefit is gained. No learning occurs.

It is accompanied by a mental shutdown. You don’t want to think about it. What you really want, as CS Lewis put it, is to “let sleeping worms lie.” You don’t want your conscience bothered by what you’re doing. Spiritually, this is a dangerous state.

The test of whether you are going through the motions or not is simply this: do you value what you’re doing, or do you want to get rid of it as quickly as possible?

 

Communion follows these rules as well. If you do it sincerely, you learn the basics of the faith quite well. Did you ever think of communion as a help to evangelism? It highlights the essentials of the faith quite well: sacrifice at the cross, death, burial, resurrection and the grace of God. Time is given to you to contemplate what you are doing; the mental exploration of these things is well worth the time — even if that’s just self-examination. Later, you can take the time to meditate on these things — well worth doing.

As you mature in this, you will begin to see the value of contemplating the Cross in your daily life. It is the gateway to the grace of God. The ordeal of the cross, symbolized in communion, is the path of forgiveness by God. It is also the path by which one grows as his disciple.

 

As you participate, do not forget to examine yourself. Ask, “am I doing this sincerely, or just going through the motions?”

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