Midweek Musing 5/27/2026- I Love Jesus… and I also Meditate a Little

I Love Jesus… and I also Meditate a Little

I saw a shirt recently while walking through the Georgia Tech campus on the way to a baseball game that read.

“I love Jesus… but I also meditate a little.”

I laughed when I saw it, partly because it caught me off guard and partly because it sounded like a confession someone expected to get judged for maybe at a Bible study or yoga class.

I could even hear the comments folks at the summer family reunion picnic on Lake Hartwell might say: “Bless her heart… she’s doing yoga and listening to wind chimes now.”

Even though it was only a brief encounter this shirt’s message has stayed with me.

That is often how God grabs hold of my attention, not in grand moments, but in unexpected ones. Sometimes it’s sitting at the counter in the Waffle House. Sometimes it’s a random conversation. Sometimes it’s on a random person's shirt that gets lodged in my brain like a splinter I can’t get out of my mind.

Anyway, the more I thought about that saying, the more I realized how strange it is that modern Christianity often acts as though spirituality and Christian faith are opposites.

As if Jesus would be horrified by someone sitting quietly, breathing deeply, and paying attention to the breath God gave us at creation and renewed in us at Pentecost.

The idea that such practices might offend Jesus is funny because Jesus himself kept wandering off to lonely places to pray.

And frankly, if anyone needed a mindfulness retreat, it was probably the disciples.

I mean, imagine spending three years trying to manage Peter and his tendency to put his foot in his mouth. That alone might do it even without the Kingdom of God talk.

But seriously, when you read Scripture carefully, you begin to notice something: our faith has always contained deep mystery, contemplation, silence, awe, and spiritual wonder.

The Bible is not merely a collection of doctrines to memorize. It is a story filled with burning bushes, dreams, visions, poetry, silence, wilderness wandering, mountaintop encounters, angelic visitations, and moments where human language itself begins to fail in the attempt to describe an encounter with God.

Moses stands barefoot before a bush that burns but is not consumed.

Elijah hears God not in the earthquake, wind, or fire, but in the “sound of sheer silence.”

Ezekiel sees wheels within wheels and creatures full of eyes.

Dry bones somehow come back to life.

The disciples watch Jesus transfigured in blinding light.

Paul speaks of being “caught up” into the heavens and hearing things too holy for words.

And resurrection? Well, resurrection is nothing if not mysterious.

Scripture is filled with mystery.

And for much of Christian history, believers understood this.

But somewhere along the way, many of us were taught that faith meant having all the answers, when much of Scripture is really about learning to stand in awe of a God too vast for answers alone.

The early church fathers and mothers often retreated into silence and solitude in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. These “Desert Fathers and Mothers” were not escaping God. They were seeking to encounter God more deeply beneath the noise of the world.

Christian mystics like Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross wrote about experiences of divine love, contemplation, and union with God that still inspire believers centuries later.

Even many of the practices people now associate with “modern spirituality” have ancient Christian cousins:breath prayers,silence,meditation on Scripture,contemplative walking,singing hymns, chanting, journaling,fasting,stilling the mind before God.

The Psalmist writes:“Be still, and know that I am God.”

That sounds an awful lot like contemplation to me.

Unfortunately, somewhere in modern Western Christianity, many churches became deeply uncomfortable with mystery.

We became suspicious of silence.

We became obsessed with certainty.

Faith slowly shifted from being an encounter with the living God into merely agreeing with the correct statements about God.

And to be fair, doctrine matters. Theology matters. Truth matters.

But Christianity is more than intellectual agreement.

It is also wonder.

It is beauty.

It is awe.

It is the lump in your throat during a hymn.

It is the silence that falls over a sanctuary during prayer.

It is the feeling that somehow grace is bigger than your words can hold.

It is sitting on a porch at sunset and sensing, even briefly, that you are part of something holy and immense and beautiful.

Maybe that is why so many people who have given up on the church or any other organized religion today describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”

To be honest, I don’t think most people are rejecting or giving up on God.

I think many are rejecting versions of faith that have lost their sense of wonder.

Versions of Christianity that feel more like legal contracts than living encounters.

Versions that explain everything but experience very little.

Versions with answers for every question but no room for mystery, beauty, lament, imagination, or awe.

And the truth is, Christianity was never supposed to lose those things.

Our faith began with mystery.

The eternal God becoming flesh is mystery.

Grace is mystery.

Resurrection is mystery.

The sacraments are filled with mystery.

Love itself is mystery.

In fact, one of the healthiest spiritual realizations we can have is that God is still bigger than our understanding.

If we can fully explain God, we have probably created something smaller than God.

Maybe what many of us need is not less Christianity and more spirituality.

Maybe we need a deeper Christianity. A Christianity old enough to remember silence, wonder, beauty, contemplation, and awe.

A Christianity that understands prayer is not only speaking but listening.

A Christianity that recognizes not every sacred moment can be explained.

A Christianity that still knows how to sit quietly in the presence of God without needing to win an argument.

Because the goal of faith is not to explain God. (Because we never fully can.)

The goal is to encounter God.

And perhaps it is important we realize this encounter often happens:in silence,in prayer,in beauty,in communion,in music,in nature,in tears,in deep breaths,in moments where our souls become still enough to notice that God was already there.

So yes, I still smile when I think about that shirt.

“I love Jesus… but I also meditate a little.”

But maybe those things are not opposites at all.

Maybe they belong together more than we ever imagined.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Alleluia Amen.