The Holiest and Happiest Saints Go “Moo” not “Oink” (Psalm 1)

“[H]is delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” —Psalm 1:2

The clean animal chewed the cud. My intent is illustrative, not allegorical or interpretative: we must eat Scripture like a cow, not a pig. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we eat less, but that we chew more. We ought be constantly chewing. It isn’t the Christian who eats most, but who chews most that will prove most genuinely righteous.

“Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that make them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian.” —Thomas Brooks

The “counsel of the wicked” stands against the “law of Yaweh” in Psalm 1. You don’t have to outsource “the counsel of the wicked.” You’ll find a factory of foolishness close to home inside your own head. Everyone knows how to meditate. We do it constantly. Our minds are churning on something. It might be nonsense, haphazard, or illogical, but they are churning. What are they churning on? The counsel of the wicked is incessantly thrown at us from every angle. If we are passive, if we are on autopilot, then we default to a way that leads to death (Proverbs 14:12).

“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you.” —D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The righteous man is one who wants God’s voice to be the loudest, to drown the others out, and so, he meditates. He fixes his mind on the Word. He chews.

Meditation is for living. It is for bringing God’s Word to bear on all of life out of zeal for His glory and love for His being. If it for living the blessed life.