Morning musings on wine and digestion…

Spurgeon has been one of my favorite preachers since I began to really study theology on my own…I find his sermons challenging, blunt, loving, and encouraging.

I read this particular passage at a timely period…nursing school consumes so much of my time. Finding time to truly meditate, digest, and ponder God’s Word has been a challenge. Yes, I’m able to stumble out of bed and groggily read through a passage with a cup of coffee…but usually that’s followed by falling back asleep for a much needed twenty extra minutes of sleep before class or clinicals. But like Spurgeon pointed out, our souls won’t be nourished by simply putting food into our mouths…I can put the most nutrient-rich foods in my mouth, but if chewing and digestion doesn’t follow it, it will do no good to my body.

“There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on his Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them. Truth is something like the cluster of the vine: if we would have wine from it, we must bruise it; we must press and squeeze it many times. The bruiser’s feet must come down joyfully upon the bunches, or else the juice will not flow; and they must well tread the grapes, or else much of the precious liquid will be wasted. So we must, by meditation, tread the clusters of truth, if we would get the wine of consolation therefrom. Our bodies are not supported by merely taking food into the mouth, but the process which really supplies the muscle, and the nerve, and the sinew, and the bone, is the process of digestion. It is by digestion that the outward food becomes assimilated with the inner life. Our souls are not nourished merely by listening awhile to this, and then to that, and then to the other part of divine truth. Hearing, reading, marking, and learning, all require inwardly digesting to complete their usefulness, and the inward digesting of the truth lies for the most part in meditating upon it. Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God’s Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord, and be this our resolve this morning, “I will meditate in thy precepts.” ~C.H. Spurgeon

I am reminded again of the necessity of meditating on God’s truth and truly allowing it to soak into my mind and live it out. I have a long ways to go, but awareness is a start. As the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12,

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”