Starbursts, Apples, & Meditation Practice
Imagine for a minute you’re eating your very favorite
candy EVER… Go on, imagine it.
Yum, right? Swirl
it around in your mouth a bit.
Tongue-toss it back and forth, from one cheek to the other.
Sour? Sweet?
Soft? Hard?
Small bits? Large bites?
Imagine your mouth filling up with flavor; slurping back
the succulent drool that’s creeping toward the corners of your mouth. There is no way you’re letting this heavenly
morsel go, so you tuck it out of the way – in your cheek or under your tongue –
so you can still have intelligible conversations. Been there?
I remember as a kid, sucking on Starbursts at the beach,
wrestling with priorities. To chew it up
or not to chew it up, that is the question?
Whether tis nobler of the mind to suffer the long moments missing time
to swim while slowly savoring the bite size fruity fragment, or take up task
and quickly chew it up, wasting the flavor along the way, to get back to the
water as soon as possible? For a child,
the dilemma was crippling. Most often
the Starburst won and swimming was delayed for as long as it took to get every
last sense of succulence swallowed.
Now, I got a new word for you. Ready?
Hagah
It sounds just like it is spelled, with short vowels, only
you’ll want to pull that first “H” sound from way in the back of your throat
like you’re hocking up a loogy: Hagah!
Got it?
You know what it means? It’s a Hebrew verb, and you’ll find its few
forms a dozen or more times throughout the Psalms translated variously. Ready?
It means to utter
or ponder or meditate.
My favorite place where it pops up is right at the outset
of the big long book of Psalms; Psalm 1:2, where it hangs like a banner over
the entry way into a big long hall filled wall to wall with profound truths
that you’ll want to spend some time uttering or pondering or meditating
on.
I’ll give you a few verses for context…
“Blessed is
the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands
in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of
scoffers;
but his
delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates
(THERE IT IS! Hagah!)
day and night.
“He is like
a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields
its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that
he does, he prospers.” (Psalm 1:1-3, ESV,
emphasis mine)

This is Selah.
She’s a Weimaraner; a silky shimmery short haired breed of hound dog
that originated in Germany. She’s more
amazing in person than even what you might imagine from this picture. I bet you have an amazing pet also. And if your amazing pet is a dog with a
personality anything like Selah’s, I bet your amazing pet loves to play
around.
Selah will chase down anything you throw – balls, wood,
Frisbee, shoe, rope – and if she knows you have a treat in your pocket, she’ll
even bring it back to you, unless of course it was an apple. Throw Selah an apple, and it’s hers for
good. And she becomes the funniest dog
when she gets one too.
She’ll take it in her mouth and prance it over to a
private little patch of grass and drop it.
She’ll walk around it a couple times, getting a good look at it from
every angle. Then she’ll hunker down by
it and take a few small nibbles. All of
a sudden she’ll jump up and bat it around on the ground with her paws, bouncing
back and forth, barking at it, as though it just came to life. This will go on for several minutes. Then she’ll settle down again and take a big
bite into her mouth and sort of tongue-toss it around, like we might do with
our favorite candy. Eventually, she’ll jump
up and play the same game all over again with what’s left of the apple, and the
whole thing continues until the apple is gone, and often enough, until the
afternoon is gone too.
The whole goofy scene, you know what it is?
Hagah
It’s an active and lively pondering or meditating.
Well that isn’t what I think of when I hear the word meditate.
Well, that’s what the Hebrews thought of when they heard
it and read it in verses like the one above.
The insistent commendation from the Psalmist was to take hold of the “law
of the LORD” – that is all which proceeds from the mouth of God, recorded in the
Bible, to instruct His people in living life abundantly and loving Him wholly
and loving others radically – take hold of the Word of God…
Read it slowly
over and over,
move around it,
peer at it from different
angles.
Take small
bites of it,
tasting and seeing
that the LORD is good.
Hunker down
over it,
handle it some,
say it out loud a few times.
Think about
it and
write about it and
talk about it with others.
Leave it for
a while,
walk through the day’s hours,
come back to it and read it again.
Weave it
into a prayer and
put it all back
before the throne
of Him
from whom it all came.
Spend long moments with the “law of the LORD” – like Selah
with her apple, like you and me with our favorite piece of candy – longer than
what may be comfortable even. Here’s
what I mean.
My alarm goes
off at 5:00am every morning. Most of the
time I snooze it for another 10 to 15 minutes.
(Bare-honest moment: Sometimes I turn it off and go back to sleep.) But eventually I rise and shine. Here begins my favorite part of the day. The house is quiet and still at the same time.
I have my Bible and my journal and a heart and mind still unencumbered
by the weight of the day.
These days in
particular I’m reading through the Minor Prophets. After reading devotionally several verses in
a row, I begin to write. I try to keep
the verses front and center and write thought for thought. Then I push it all back and away, recline on
the sofa, close my eyes, and employ my imagination for a while. I want to imagine people and places and words
and such. I want to imagine contexts and
voices and expressions on hearer’s faces.
I want to imagine coming into God’s presence with His words I’ve read
and my words I’ve written and offering them back to Him as my offering for the
day. Often I’ll wrap up the time writing
again, but now I’m writing out what I hope to tell others in respect to what
the previous several minutes produced in me.
So I… Read it
Write it
Think it
Pray it
Say it
Then, after 10 –
30 – 60 minutes or so the longitude of the day ahead begins to seep into the
moment. I close up my Bible and journal
and take whatever thoughts trickled into my depths and head into the day with
all its excitement and blur. But hagah is not done. Hagah
has only just begun.
I’ve only just unwrapped the candy and
popped it into my mouth.
The Psalmist
says hagah is a “day and night”
thing. Hagah is spending time in God’s Word. But further yet, it is spending enough time that when you leave it, it hasn’t left you. Write that down…
The “law of the
LORD” is still there on my mind and in my heart; ruminating around at the
deepest part of my soul. The truths and
principles are there at hand to live out and love on. A key word or phrase keeps tumbling around on
my tongue. A pointed story leaks from my
lips to others as opportunity arises; and opportunity will arise if we’re
serious and look for it.

I wonder if you’d be up for trying hagah with me one of these mornings this week or next. Maybe try it a couple days in a row, or a few
days out of several. The return on
investment is sincere. Scroll up and
read verse 3 again. In fact, hagah a bit on verse 3…
Read it over a couple times. Write it out with a few thoughts or feelings
or ideas that come to mind about it. Then
just imagine the whole picture – a steady stream, a gangly apple tree, brilliant
red fruit, bright green leaves. Frame
what’s stirring in your heart into a prayer before the Author of the text. And finally, take it all with you as you head
into the day ahead.
And just see if what the Psalmist says there at the end
doesn’t become your reality.
(This post was adapted from a chapel talk I gave recently
at a local Christian elementary school.)
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