Ezra Reflections are thoughts that have come to mind in the course of reading the Bible and other books over many years. They are shared to help you deepen your relationship with God by taking things you know about him into the way you live. That’s the step we find hardest in the Christian life – translating knowledge into experience. The link between the two is most often the exercise of prayerful, reflective thinking. These Reflections are intended to help you do that.

 

Reflecting is an act of thinking. Several words and images come to mind when I think of the term. One is the word “pause”. To reflect we have to look back on something, and that means pressing the pause button on what we are doing in the present. Another word is “examine”. Reflecting is more than just remembering or re-visiting; it involves reconsidering, re-examining, and re-exploring something, perhaps from a different angle than we have before. Another term is “savouring”. This suggests enjoying something we are thinking about.

 

In the field of images, “reflecting” recalls to mind the picture of a cow chewing its cud. Cows gulp down forage when they graze and regurgitate it later for chewing. It’s this later chewing process that mixes their food with saliva and helps the digestion process. The same occurs when we “reflect” on things we read. Ideas “gulped down” as we scan a page are brought back to mind for a closer look. When that happens, we often gain more from them. Added to that, holding them before our minds gives the Holy Spirit opportunity to impress them on our hearts.

 

That’s why the Bible makes much of this process of reflecting. In our translations it is usually called meditating. Joshua is urged to meditate on the Book of the Law “day and night” so that he will be “careful to do everything written in it” (Joshua 1:8). The key to a life of blessing, the writer of the first Psalm tells us, is to “delight in the law of the Lord” and to “meditate on it day and night” (Psalm 1:2). The writer of Psalm 63 tells of meditating on God in the long watches of the night (Ps. 63:6), while the author of Psalm 119 declares that his love for God’s law leads him to “meditate on it day and night” (Ps. 119:97). We may suppose from Jesus’ familiarity with the Old Testament that he often meditated on it, even as the Apostle Paul encourages the Colossian Christians to let the word of Christ “dwell” in them richly (Col. 3:16).

 

For all of that, meditating, or prayerfully reflecting on God’s Word and helpful books, is a rapidly disappearing practice. The pace of life, the deluge of information, and the distractions of entertainment all war against the practice of “reflecting” on what we hear, see or read. We like to receive information in short, sharp bits that we can quickly process before we pass on to the next thing. And that doesn’t encourage meditation.

 

Helping people reflect on God’s Word lies at the heart of the Ezra Ministry. Its underlying conviction is that, more than anything else, it is steady, loving, prayerful reflection on God’s Word that deepens our relationship with him and changes our lives. If that is not happening, we are doomed to shallow and superficial spiritual lives.

 

Nobody can reflect on God’s words for us. But others can help us do it. They can slow us down, lead us more deeply into ideas, and suggest new ways of looking at familiar truths. That is what the Ezra Reflections aim to do. They set out to hold a particular idea – be it from the Bible or a book – before your mind, exploring it and revolving it with a view to helping you get more from it. It is our prayer that as that happens, fresh truths will take hold of your mind, old and harmful ones will be flushed out, and that your life will be renewed (Rom. 12:2).

 

Most of these Reflections will be in series. Some will be thoughts on successive verses in the Bible or ideas in a book; others will be thematically arranged. Each new series will be introduced so you shouldn’t get confused as to when one ends and another begins. Where digressions occur, they will be signalled clearly so that you can stay on track and not get lost.

 

Usually a Reflection will have a question or two at the end. If you are serious about deepening your relationship with God you will want to respond to these. Change seldom occurs through the simple act of reading. Biblical change happens as we “put off” old ideas and habits and “put on” new ones (Eph. 4:23-24; Col. 3:9-13). That takes decision, commitment and effort. Taking a few moments to think and act upon the questions at the end of a Reflection will be a step along that way.

 

If you would like to ask your own questions please write to me at reflections@ezraministry.org.nz. I will not only try to answer your queries but, with your permission, would like to add your question(s) (anonymously) and the response(s) to the website library of Reflections for others to read. That, however, will be your choice.

 

Finally, the thoughts shared in these Reflections are a transcript of my own thinking process. Throughout my Christian life I have gained enormously from the slow, reflective, prayerful reading of the Bible and good books. Most of these books come from the evangelical and Reformed tradition, but some do not. Some are recent books, some are very old. Where I reflect on ideas that come from authors you may consider “suspect”, bear with me. I’m not necessarily endorsing everything a writer says, only passing on what the Spirit has blessed to my own soul.

 

I pray sincerely that as I share these personal reflections with you the Holy Spirit will use them to bless your heart, lead you closer to God, and make you more like the Lord Jesus.

 

Andrew Young