Meditating on Bible Verses
December 11, 2005
Last Sunday, December 4th, pastor Skip Ryan challenged the congregation of Park Cities Presbyterian Church www.pcpc.org to meditate on a section of Psalm 119 each day until Christmas.
WOW that part of the Bible is my favorite. And I had planned to mediate on those verses for YEARS. But I kept putting it off. Here was my opportunity to get victory over that procrastination and begin to enjoy the riches of this glorious part of the scriptures.
So began with the Bible I carry to church. But then after a short while I thought that I spend much more time at my computer than at my reading chair. I recalled that I had prepared some pages of colorful Bible verses with a disabled American veteran neighbor Shebaa Green, www.shebaa.org She had used the marked pages of Psalms 27, 37 and 91. I had prepared a selection of prayer promises and titled it Daily Spiritual Warfare. God used these to bring her hope, comfort and peace when she could not sleep due to the pain from her degenerative disk disease, stomach ulcers and asthma. Others had seen her meditating on these at the hospital and elsewhere and asked for a copy for themselves.
HISTORY
These markings had been developed over the course of more than twenty years. It began when the verses in First John and the gospel of John stood out to me about if you love me then you will keep my commandments. I knew that I loved Jesus. And so here was a way to express my love for Him by keeping His commandments. Also the exhortation in James 1:22 about begin a doer of the Word was stirring my heart at that season as a new believer.
So I bought a pen that has four colors of ink red, green, black and blue. I would underline the verses in green that were for me to do and underline them in red for me not to do. At first I fully excepted that the red and green would be about equal. However in reality I found that there is about ten times as many green verses as red in both the New and Old Testaments.
I saw these verses about what I am to do I recognized that there was often a corresponding action that God would take. Or there was a promise based on the character of God in the same verse. At first I underlined those parts in black and used the blue ink for other notes in the margin. This practice began in the early 1980s. After a while I started to use yellow highlighter for who God is or what He does. It was not until I marked Psalm 119 this week that I used light blue to highlight the prayers.
For many years I would write out some of the verses of the Bible that were the most appealing to me on a 3 by 5 index card. I would mark them up and carry them with me. Then at the red traffic light, waiting at in the line at the bank or other odd moment I would pull these out to meditate on them. Proverbs 4:20-22 is an exhortation to attend to the words of God, turning my ear to his saying, letting them not depart from my eyes and keeping them in the midst of my heart. That will lead to life and health. Thus I found that during the times of greatest difficulty when I looked on these cards often then my faith was stronger and my peace was greater.
Over the years I gathered a collection of many dozens of cards. Some got worn out due to use. It was fascinating to notice how certain verses had a strong appeal for a while and then that would dissolve. But other verses would become very alive to me. I encountered these in my Bible reading, hearing the pastor’s sermons or in books I was reading.
About two years ago instead of handwriting another set of index cards to replace the worn ones I put them into a MS Word document. I used the yellow highlighter tool for the names and nature of God. It does not offer a green or red underlining option. So I used green highlight on the action verb related to my application and underlined the entire phrase. I used red highlighting for the few prohibition phrases.
WEB TRANSLATION
At first I was just going to make up these verses and use them privately like I have for years. Then I realized that others might get value from this method. That includes the members of PCPC during this Christmas season as well as others for years to come.
I know that what I need more than anything is to slow down and pay closer attention to key passages. Minute for minute that has brought more short term and long term benefit than any other approach to the Bible. I am reminded of how taking a digital camera out on a walk in the park causes me to slow down because I like to take close up pictures of flowers. Without the camera I tend to rush along. But getting very close and focusing on just one flower causes me to appreciate the beauty that was there all along. I have also learned that when I set out to also share the photos with others I take greater care and thus observe more. Here is one of my online photo albums of flowers http://fellowpilgrim.photosite.com/Flowers3-20-05
Along the way to mark these verses to share with others I felt prompted by the Lord to include the other marked up Psalms and Daily Spiritual Warfare prayer promises. These would work best if published as PDF files and located on a web site. Thus the work that was done recently can easily be shared with many others by just sending a simple web address. Also I expect to be marking up many more verses in the coming months and years. So I can use an easy way to quickly share those with others.
When I went down this path of opening the door to the public I needed to consider the copyright issues. Privately I can use any version. And when I pass along a handful of print copies to close friends that is not a problem. But when anyone can access a web site I would be open to legal troubles if I used a popular translation like the NAS or NIV. Previously I had come across the World English Bible WEB www.ebible.org that has been developed for just such a situation. It is intentionally public domain so that legal problems are avoided. On the web site at the bottom of the page named Guidelines I have a link to Bible Gateway. This will allow any person to find the Bible in every popular translation. Then they can contrast it to the WEB and/or mark it up using MS Word.
So here is the link to the brand new web site named Colorful Verses www.colorfulverses.org And you are invited to use the Feedback page to share your comments, suggestions or questions.
