Meditation as Augmented Kingdom Reality

As you make progress in a Be A Tree type approach you will start to have the ability to put your phone or Bible down and move throughout your day and world meditatively.  Much like modern augmented reality (as opposed to virtual reality) we see the world around us but we start to see it through Kingdom eyes.  The culture of our day has its own plausibility structures, values, and beliefs that make the gospel and its demands incoherent. We often feel like the double-minded person of James 1 because we aspire to a Biblical life while living in the plausibility structures of this world.  The goal of formation is to be single-mindedly in the reality of Christ and his gospel and the resurrection and then to live that out on planet earth.   The neighbor mowing his yard is someone I no longer “regard from a human point of view” (2 Cor 5:16) and I find myself praying for him.  The rigorous call to holiness in the Bible starts to make sense intuitively.  The immorality we aren’t supposed to even have a hint of (Ephesians 5:3) really does start to feel “out of place” and “improper.”  Now I am being changed not just in behavior but at an affective level…my beliefs, values and habits are changing.  Prayer, praise and thanksgiving become not a duty but a necessity.  In the end a prayerful, meditatively immersed experience of God’s word meets the living person of God in his Spirit.  

Obedience: Yeah, its important!

For Memorization/Meditation to move to Transformation it is critical that we obey God's word and not merely enjoy it.  If you are really delighting in his goodness and are being formed in that goodness it becomes incomprehensible to not want to step through the window of Scripture into the reality itself.  When we don't obey we are putting the whole project in danger.  James 1 actually warns people that the what the Bible reveals like a mirror to a person can lead to a delusion if the person simply learns to turn the mirror at those moments.  Thats one reason I suggest picking a peg verse from time to time that hits you where it hurts.  I'm someone who is not a gentle person by nature (Enneagram 8 for those who are familiar) so when I picked a verse in Phillipians 4 I chose verse 5 "let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near." I've meditated on how God's nearness can be a calming presence for me and empower me to be grow in gentleness.