{"id":3815,"date":"2024-07-09T02:46:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T02:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3815"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:32:23","slug":"meditation-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3815","title":{"rendered":"MEDITATION LITERATURE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout the summer I have been meeting with the teens of the church on Monday mornings for breakfast and Bible study.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[The difficulty of getting teens to the church at 8:00 am following a summer weekend is actually part of the design. I didn&#8217;t necessarily want it to be easy.]<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This morning we had 4 young men in attendance and we had donuts, fried eggs, and bacon and looked at Genesis 2 &#8211; the creation of Adam and Eve.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After we read the passage out loud, I encouraged these guys to pose questions that the text raised in their minds. They had some good ones:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Why did God place the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden in the first place if He didn&#8217;t want Adam and Eve eating from it?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Why was Adam created from the dust of the ground instead of being spoken into existence like almost everything in Genesis 1? Why not &#8220;Let there be man&#8221;?<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Why did God make Eve from Adam&#8217;s rib instead of grabbing more dust?<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Somewhere recently I came across a theologian referring to the Bible as &#8220;meditation literature&#8221; &#8211; I want to say it was Tim Mackie &#8211; meaning the Scriptures are meant to be read and then chewed on.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They simply don&#8217;t yield their truths to speed readers and skimmers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They demand meditation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And meditation always starts with questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throughout the summer I have been meeting with the teens of the church on Monday mornings for breakfast and Bible study.\u00a0 [The difficulty of getting teens to the church at 8:00 am following a summer weekend is actually part of the design. I didn&#8217;t necessarily want it to be easy.] This morning we had 4 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3816,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3815\/revisions\/3816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}