He has developed his own style of Christian meditation over three decades, which draws on a range of influences including the Desert Fathers (early Christian hermits, ascetics and monks, who lived in the Egyptian desert from the 3rd century) Roman Catholic priest, Benedictine monk and spiritual writer John Main the French ecumenical monastic fraternity Taizé, Martin Luther and, of course, the meditations present in the Bible. Pastor Stephen, who was already teaching Christian meditation when a spinal injury left him with permanent debilitating and chronic pain and forced his retirement from full-time ministry in his early 30s, uses meditation whenever his pain is severe. Indeed, until recent times, many modern Christians have shied away from the practice, says Lutheran Pastor Stephen Abraham. Pastor Tim, Chaplain at Pacific Lutheran College at Caloundra in Queensland, explains that Luther put praying to God for guidance first before reading the Scriptures in his model and made the cross of Christ central to the Lutheran tradition of meditation.Īnd yet, as Lutherans in Australia and New Zealand, many of us have grown without much knowledge of what Christian meditation is and how and why it is an important, even central, element of our faith journeys.
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He reformed and simplified the medieval monastic model as he did so, according to LCA Pastor Tim Jarick, in his paper ‘Mysticism, Monks and Marty: Meditation in the Lutheran tradition’. Martin Luther, too, practised, taught and wrote on meditation. In fact in Psalm 1, God’s people are urged to meditate on his word – on his law – ‘day and night’.
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There are many biblical references to meditation, from Genesis through the New Testament, with many specific mentions in the Psalms.
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And it was part of the tradition of those of the Jewish faith long before that. Christian meditation is an ancient practice dating back thousands of years, to the first days of the church.