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Meditation

On Keeping Quiet

If you’re like me, you might be fascinated by this chapter just because it’s hard to think of your kids meditating on anything.

Well, maybe on Minecraft?

Meditation is for quiet families, right? Maybe those who needlepoint together. Not the kind of boys like mine, whom I continually remind to remove all Nerf weapons from the dinner table. Once when Baden returned from a friend’s house, I asked him to start on chores. He begged for a few minutes of downtime first: “I’ve been hanging at their house all day, and they’re a nice Christian family!”

My eyebrows sloped up. “Aren’t we a nice Christian family?”

“Yeah, but they’re a gentle nice Christian family. I’ve been trying to behave all day.”

Point received. Rather than a peaceful, spa-like atmosphere, our house is more toward the bring-a-helmet side of things. Even (especially?) a rowdy crew like mine needs to cultivate quiet, to soak in God’s Word, letting it diffuse in us like a tea bag.

And that’s meditation in a nutshell.

It’s making space for God.

It murmurs a quiet, insistent stop to many stormy and demanding things that don’t matter, so we can say yes to the One who does. It allows our lives to be lived thoughtfully and on purpose, with room to love God. Meditation is making the choice of Mary—to listen at Jesus’s feet, which Jesus dubbed more important than doing things for him (see Luke 10:38-42).

The Overthrow of Silence

Once upon a time, I was the beneficiary of a jangling visit to Chuck E. Cheese with my kids for another kid’s birthday. And by beneficiary, I mean it may have granted me a little PTSD. Or rendered me one step closer to an epileptic seizure. Amid nonstop lights, sounds, colors, sugar, games, and greasy food that could have made anyone pine for a rubber room, I was reminded that our world’s view of a kids’ paradise is incessant stimulation and activity.

Where kids used to stare out a car window or run around outside, they now stare at devices. White space for our kids’ brains—and hearts—is nearly nonexistent. Even as adults, we’ve got our phones in our hands in the bathroom.

So look for spaces to pry open for time to think. Will, my contemplative secondborn, likes to pray on his walk to school. Corinne prefers journaling; we’ve recently begun Jenny Randle’s Courageous Creative interactive devotional together. By establishing a comfort with downtime or introspective interactions, we turn mindless activities into time to do what Francis Chan calls “prinking”: praying and thinking.

One of the most difficult parts of meditation or contemplation is simply transitioning into quiet—into fuller presence with God. Deep-breathing techniques have scientifically been proven to create more sustained attention, improve affect, and decrease stress hormone levels.¹ They’re a great on-ramp to solitude or, at a minimum, awareness of God, even when you’re not technically alone. Because I’m not naturally supercognizant of my stress until it bites me (and usually everyone else in the vicinity), I use breathing to help me take my focus to a level where I’m conscious of how I’m reacting to the world—and welcoming God back in.

Permanent Truth

Meditation—and its cousin, solitude—is about letting God’s Word steep in us so it can speak in its infinite layers and in its limitless application to life, and to our hearts. It is…

• training our ears to listen, our eyes to see deeper

• paying attention; focusing on God’s presence

• self-awareness via God-awareness

• “to more deeply gaze on God in his works and words” in the words of Adele Ahlberg Calhoun²

• creating “holy space” in our schedules, cultural intake, and the “messy room” of life in order to think, grow comfortable being alone, and get used to contemplating and listening to God’s whisper

• leaving behind who other people say we are and all of life’s trophies, and finding our true selves at home with God

First, Quiet

Shooing a kid outside or letting him be bored inside may not seem like priming him for a contemplative life. But it may help him to be a little less distracted and add a little more brain real estate for him to think. As he ages, he can press deeper, sit still longer, and understand more fully what the Word looks like in life.

That might stretch more broadly than we’d think. Richard Foster names four kinds of meditation, all of which I can see kids doing:

•Meditation on Scripture. (Are they looking at a verse you wrote on the memo board?)

•Stillness in God’s presence. (Can you picture kids lying on their backs in the grass?)

•Meditation on creation. (See them huddling around some cool bug or weird mushroom?)

•Reflection on the events of our times.³ (Could they be talking with you around the table?)

With the practice of meditation, we essentially establish a cozy comfort level with the kind of life that listens to God, to what’s happening within them, and even to others. We want kids to develop introspective, intentional, observant, thoughtful lives.

You Put Your Whole Self In

Lectio divina is a method of meditating on Scripture dating back to the third century. It helps me bring my whole self into my reading of Scripture—to love God with not only all my mind but also all my heart, soul, and strength.

As you can see below, the process involves four basic steps. We read through a brief Bible passage slowly, at least twice, recognizing what naturally sticks out to us. We meditate on emotions, ideas, images, or words that come to mind and listen for how God might be moving inside us. Then we pray responsively about what we’ve begun to understand based on meditation of Scripture. Finally, we contemplate, enjoying and thanking God for how he’s revealed himself to us through his Word, and seek to actively live what we’ve experienced in Scripture.

Although a number of trustworthy evangelicals endorse lectio divina, it can, like any tool, be used for harm. It can swing mystical, for one. Some people, blogger Tim Challies reports, have used the practice to “equate your spirit to the Holy Spirit.”⁴

My personal caveat would be not to check your hermeneutics (your scripturally sound methods of Bible interpretation) at the door. We can’t interpret everything that comes into our minds as “God told me”—a way Christians sometimes apply God’s rubber stamp to their own assertions. God is forthright in the Old Testament about false prophets—people who falsely report that God told them something (see Deuteronomy 18:20-22). We also need to help kids discern the difference between listening for what God might be saying—but holding that knowledge in the right place—and mistaking our ideas for God’s.

That said, used properly, I’ve found lectio to plunge deeper my understanding of Scripture and my communion with God as I welcome him to impress upon my heart and even my imagination what may have happened in Bible times, or how a verse could apply to my life or my past. It’s also a great opportunity, when used with kids, to plunder the richness of their own imaginations about how a Bible story may have taken place: what it smelled, sounded, or tasted like. (Manna! Fish with Jesus on the beach!) Why people responded the ways they did. The spectrum of what characters may have felt. This amps up Scripture’s degree of saturation in our lives—and therefore, its powerful transformation factor. Lectio allows God’s story to further speak to our family’s story.

Read.

Read the passage at least twice, slowly and carefully. As you do so, listen for the “still, small voice” of the Holy Spirit. Allow the Word to interact with your personal experiences, past and present. Ask yourself, “What is this passage saying? What sticks out to me?”

Meditate.

Meditate on the passage. What emotions, images, ideas, or words come to mind? How do you instinctively react to the reading? Ask yourself, “How could God be speaking to me? What might God want me to do?”

Pray.

Respond to God based on your meditation. Consider journaling or keeping record of your response. You might worship, ask questions, thank God, confess, and ask God for what you need.

Contemplate.

Be quiet. This is time to rest, enjoying God. Listen for God’s response, and live transformed in the world from your encounter with God’s Word.

Solitude: Being “All There” with God

You’ve been there: Whirling into a coffee shop or dinner with friends. Or talking on the phone while your kids fight in the other room (#methisweek), and you try to remember whether you’ve added salt to the recipe you’re cooking.

But somehow, the person looking you in the eyes, or on the other end of that phone call, has the ability to just…be there.

Ever conversed with a person who makes you feel heard and received? Who is undistracted and all there? Our ability to be truly present with other people—undistracted, wholly there—begins first in having comfort and affection from God. Take Paul’s words in Philippians 2:1-4 (ESV): “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy…do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

You can probably see this in the kid who interrupts at dinner. Because—going back to the identity principles of chapter 1—if I’m listening to someone without being “rooted and established in love” (Ephesians 3:17), my desires for affection, appreciation, esteem, or attention subtract from my focus on the person across from me. Being fully present with God requires us to set aside our self-centeredness and attempts at image management (more consuming than our phones, if you ask me). As we practice being present with God, we learn to focus on and be with someone else. This skill spills over into our relationships with others.

Practicing meditation has meant being curious as to how present I am in my most central, overarching relationship. The psalmist prays, “Give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name” (Psalm 86:11). I wonder if I was on God’s mind when he penned this one because my heart can be going in about 167,859 directions at once: dance practices and Prime shipping and the niggling feeling I get about the latest headlines.

I have divergent, conflicting desires (check out James 1:5-8; 4:1) too. My heart isn’t “pure” in the sense of being of one substance, of being undivided. But the pure in heart—in one sense, those whose hearts are “all there” with him—see God (Matthew 5:8).

The noise in my life chokes out God’s presence in my life and affects my ability to listen: “The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19 ESV). But spending time alone with God does the opposite. So what could a “listening life” look like in our kids, whom we’re just trying to stop from shouting up the stairs, for the love of Mike?

In solitude, we gradually introduce space, quiet, and alone time with God, tuning the knobs of our hearts to God’s frequency—the “still, small voice” he’s always emitting: not in Elijah’s wind, earthquake, or fire…but the whisper.

Read one verse at bedtime.

At night before bed, ask if anyone has a verse they’ve been learning more about in Sunday school or youth group or even on their own. Talk about it together. Just before lights-out, read one verse to think about as they fall asleep. Or emphasize a different word of a verse in their heads and think on each word for a bit—so that each word can be “chewed” on: “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8, emphasis added).

Use butcher paper to help kids think more on Scripture.

Butcher paper is a fantastic resource for teaching Scripture. Trace around their bodies, and let them draw on (and label) the armor of God from Ephesians 6. Let them draw the timeline of events in Revelation or sketch the sequence of a Bible story. If family devotions are after dinner, use butcher paper as your place mats during dinner, and allow kids to color what they hear after the dishes have been cleared.

Work on your Scripture memory in the shower.

Slip verses into page protectors, and use water to adhere them to shower walls that don’t receive much spray.

Post a verse of the week on the fridge.

We have a cheapo marker board on the fridge. Every week, I write a new verse of the week. (Or if a kid writes it, the better the chance they’ll remember it.) Sometimes I pull out my phone and read a verse for the day before my kids march off to school. I keep in mind the current needs of my family when I pick verses. If we’re experiencing conflict, they might see James 4:1: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” or Romans 12:18: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

Think on a Scripture verse silently.

To change up regular family prayer time, read a Scripture verse and think on it silently for 30 seconds—then longer as kids get used to silence. Don’t give up if the first time everyone just sits and looks at each other or tries not to snort. Little kids might draw what they think about a Bible verse; older kids can journal on the verse or on what they’re learning about God lately. Their picking the journal makes this process infinitely cooler. Encourage your kids to “soak” in the Word, not just chalk up the chapters. Quantity doesn’t equal quality.

Find a quiet spot outside and think about God.

Go on a hike or lie spread-eagle on the nearest vacant soccer field. Find a quiet spot outside and lie on your backs, thinking about God or quieting your minds. Set it up by talking to your kids about verses from the Bible like Psalm 19:1: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Check out God’s engineering skills on the back of a leaf; marvel at his artwork in a cool tree trunk. Bring a kids’ bird book if you want (we like National Geographic Kids Bird Guide of North America), or a magnifying glass or portable microscope.

Cart back small rocks (you’ll be amazed what kids can hold in their pockets…or maybe you won’t be?), and see if you can find which kind they are in books like Scholastic’s Rocks, Minerals, and Gems: The Definitive Visual Catalog of the Treasure beneath Your Feet. If you have a thinker or future scientist on your hands, you might consider The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-Ups by Gina Ingoglia.

Up the impact by bringing along sketchpads with art media, watercolor boxes and a jar of water, scrap paper and crayons for leaf or bark rubbings (bonus: turn them into relief with a thin wash of watercolor), or prayer journals they’ve picked out.

Ask the kids what they learn about God’s character from something they see. Do they see his orderliness? His planning? His nurture?

If your child won’t be too distracted by the technology, take photos and share them later—particularly how your subject reminded you of God.

Discuss how Scripture applies to current happenings.

Talk about how Scripture applies to current headlines, movies, or even situations at school. My mom was particularly fluid at applying Scripture to any situation, not in a Bible-wielded-as-a-medieval-cudgel sort of way, but as a way to work it into everyday life. From her, I learned that the Bible had something to add to or enlighten everything. Jesus did this too, applying the Old Testament wherever he was at.

John—who’s particularly adept at this—might ask, “How do you think we could pray for those people who went through that?” or “Did you hear about this today in the news? I was thinking that…” He’ll dialogue with our older kids: “What do you think about how the government is responding to immigration? What Bible verses help us understand either side of the argument?”

Make a prayer labyrinth.

Draw a prayer labyrinth on your driveway with sidewalk chalk. Looking like life-size mazes, but with a clear path in and out (no dead ends), these were originally crafted on the floors of cathedrals to help worshipers slowly walk their way into meditation. Find plenty of sample images and ideas online.

On their slow walk into the center of the labyrinth, help your kids “release,” whether that’s letting go of fears or confessing sin or giving God what’s been on their minds. You might have symbols drawn—or kids might have fun chalking those in—at certain points to have them stop and pray for things like school or family.

The center of the labyrinth is a time to quietly rest and receive from God for as long as they like. They might sit, stand, or lie down. If they need a prompt, ask what God’s Word says to them about what’s going on in their lives right now.

In the twists and turns on the way out from the center, they’re returning to their daily reality, thinking about how what they received from God connects with life.

Try a media fast.

Talk to kids about whether you might fast from all media or noise on a regular night every week (maybe Saturday in preparation for worship on Sunday?) or for a set number of days. Alternatively, replace a weekday chore with a time of solitude.

Use box breathing.

I find helpful the box breathing (or square breathing) technique used by medical personnel, athletes, military⁵—and my ten-year-old. Kids can picture a square: As you travel up the first leg of the square, inhale for four seconds. Across the top of the square, hold that breath four seconds. Proceeding down the side of the square, exhale for four seconds. To “close” the square, breathe normally for four seconds.

Spend time alone.

Solitude (meditation’s “cousin”) can be a step toward peacemaking. When your elementary-age and older kids have an argument, have them each spend time alone before hashing it out. This decreases the fight-flight-freeze response and allows the logical, compassionate, and generally more repentant frontal cortex to regain control. Have kids come back ready to apologize for the “log in their eye”—their contribution to the conflict (as opposed to stewing on the other person’s issue).

If your kids have outgrown naptime, consider replacing it with afternoon downtime. Kids can spend time reading, completing a puzzle, or building with Lincoln Logs. Bonus: The parent gets some downtime too.

For more activity ideas, discussion questions, and other resources for teaching meditation, visit janelbreitenstein.com/permanentmarkers/meditation.

•Invite your adolescents and their friends to engage in a book club with you, perhaps with a book rich in symbolism, like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Tale of Despereaux, The Penderwicks, Pax, The Wednesday Wars, A Wrinkle in Time, or anything by Gary D. Schmidt.

For littler people, read picture books together that illuminate spiritual principles, and chat about them, asking questions to help kids apply abstract principles in their more concrete reasoning skills. Authors who offer thoughtful kids’ books from which to draw powerful spiritual metaphors:

•Any of R.C. Sproul, Max Lucado, and William Bennett’s children’s books

•Pete & Pillar; Skid & the Too Tiny Tunnel by Jeffery Stoddard

•The Great Stone Face (I like Gary D. Schmidt’s illustrated retelling of this Nathaniel Hawthorne classic)

•What Is Heaven Like? by Beverly Lewis (fabulous illustrations!)

•The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde

•Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney (on vocation, “on earth as it is in heaven”)

•The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf (“in quietness and trust is your strength”)

•Waiting Is Not Easy by Mo Willems (on longing for heaven)

•My Friend Is Sad by Mo Willems (on grief)

•The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss (on peer pressure)

•Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey (on knowing the shepherd’s voice)

•We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen (on temptation)

•The Rough Patch by Brian Lies (on grief)

•The Goblin and the Empty Chair by Mem Fox (on the power of compassion, and heart mattering more than outward appearance)

•Charley’s First Night by Amy Hest (on God’s tender care)

•He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands by Kadir Nelson (from the text of the spiritual)

•Purchase blank jigsaw puzzles and have kids create verse memory puzzles for each other and themselves (puzzle competition, anyone?). Or take the simpler route of tasking them with creating one on construction paper, and have kids cut their own puzzle. You can also write verses in horizontal lines, cut the lines apart from each other, and ask kids to arrange the verse in proper order.

•On a school break, a couple of my creatively oriented kids and I picked out one of the ESV’s Illuminated Scripture Journals, along with colored, extra-fine-tip pens. Blank pages allow kids to create their own Scripture art alongside passages. There’s a journal for each book of the Bible—so my son chose Proverbs, my daughter selected Esther, and I picked Ephesians.

•What’s one verse your brain or heart has been hanging onto lately?

•Is there anything God has shown you more than once in the last few days?

•How do you get a verse that you’ve read to be part of your life? Have any tips or examples?

•What’s one verse you’ve applied in a new way lately?

•Why do you think it’s so hard to be quiet or be alone?

•Why is it good to take time to be alone with God? (Kids will often respond with things they need to do for God in this time. Continue to steer them to simply be with God, inviting him into their thoughts and feelings and wanderings.)

•What are the most effective ways to help Scripture saturate you? Do you journal? Talk with a friend? Wrestle with God? If meditation isn’t a strength of yours, where does the breakdown usually occur? If it is, how could you help your kids learn to follow a similar process?

•Sometimes being “all there” with God involves “closing the door” to distractions as we go into the closet of our heart (Matthew 6:6), shutting out the noise. At other times, this involves bringing the noise in our heads right to God: giving him our questions, paying attention to why something’s consuming us. Which of these do you most need to do today?

•We tend to hide what we’re uncomfortable with: anger, fear, sadness, shame. What do you tend to hide from God?

•What activities in your quiet time distract you from knowing God and being with him?

•If you and your spouse take date nights together, why do you think you take time to still go on dates? How is that like being alone with God?

•Jesus accused the Pharisees of being two-faced: They spackled up the outside but remained far from him (Matthew 15:8; 23:27). Sometimes I’m pulling out my Bible and spending time in prayer, but I’m preoccupied by work or by anxiety about one of my kids or a social situation. Rather than drawing those thoughts into my quiet time, I remain double-minded. It sounds laughable, maybe—trying to fake it with God and usually with myself. (“Here I am! Doing my devotions!”) What would it look like to be with God with your whole self?

•Consider the “Prayer of Examen” on the next page to help you witness God’s presence and see him moving around you.

The Prayer of Examen

1.Enter God’s presence. Quiet your heart. Be with God, thinking about who he is.

2.Comb through what happened today. Look for places for which you can be thankful.

3.Pray, Holy Spirit, show me truth while I pray.

4.Pray while thinking, How was God with me today?

5.Pray while thinking, How did I respond to God’s presence in my day?

6.Pray about your day, bringing it all to God.

Prayer of the Dependent Parent

Lord, you lead my family to green pastures and quiet waters. But I imagine that a lot of times we ignore them for the sake of what’s more stimulating to our senses. Our identities. Our passions.

Help us, like Mary, to choose what’s better.

It’s distinctly countercultural to reject the hustle, the love of looking good, and instead make space for our hearts to hear. But, Lord, my family needs quiet. We need to connect with the peace you’ve purchased through Jesus.

More than that, we need you. Stop us, that we may be loved, anchored. Slow us down—and not so we can power full steam ahead again. Rather than what our world values, let our family be driven by you.