Today marks the first day of my monkery experiment. I'm not planning on doing a post everyday so as not to overwhelm everyone with posts. I'm planning on doing one every couple of days of though.
So lets get into the experiences of the first day.
For the morning meditation I've decided to use the readings from the SOARing devotional. Except for today I used the one from September 30th (Galatians 3:1-14) because I didn't see them listed on the right side and it was the latest audio file available. *dunce cap*
One thing that became readily apparent to me during the morning meditation was that I was able to understand the passage much better when I slowed down to really think about it. I follow a reading plan that gives me about 4 chapters to read each day, and usually my focus is on finishing the reading and not thinking about the text that much. I do spend a little bit of time thinking about what I've read, but if nothing immediately comes to me I move on to the next passage. With no next passage for me to read though it freed me up to think about it for longer than I would normally have.
The morning meditation was by far the easiest one of the day.
The afternoon meditation was a bit tougher. I'm used to doing my Bible reading in the morning, so the morning meditation fit in with my normal schedule. I'm not used to doing any type of meditation in the afternoon though. By the afternoon my mind is usually quite active and has a million and one thoughts bouncing around in it. Also, the passage for the afternoon was from Psalms, which is the part of the Bible that I struggle with the most as far as interpreting because it's poetical and I don't like poetry precisely because it's hard for me to understand. With these two forces working together it made things rather difficult for me, but I did manage to concentrate my thoughts after a bit and meditate on the passage.
I had church in the evening, so I have substituted that for the evening meditation, so no idea how the evening meditations will go yet.
In closing I will share with you my reflection from today on Galatians 3:1-5.
Reflection:
It's amazing how the Galatians could believe a gospel concerning Jesus other than the one they had been taught by Paul (or his fellow workers). To me this seems to be the equivalent of a banker, who has handled real money for years, one deciding that counterfeit money is the equivalent of real money!
Amazing as this phenomenon is thought it is not surprising based on my understanding of Roman culture. From my understanding Romans believed, much like our own culture, that all religions were basically equal. From my understanding they didn't seem to be prone to dispute much when someone came around promoting a religion or philosophy that was contrary to what they believed. Instead were prone to incorporate whatever it was into what they currently believe. So when a group came around teaching a gospel contrary to what Paul had taught it isn't surprising that they incorporated it rather than rejected it.
With such a tendency being prevalent throughout the Roman Empire it is no wonder why Paul had to write so extensively about not following other religions or philosophies! If Paul had not discouraged such things among the Believers then I think that Christianity would cease to exist, and likely would not have survived the Roman Empire.
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