Lectio Divina: Introduction

I first remember hearing about lectio divina in a youth ministry context. This might be surprising for some, but not for others. In many ways, youth ministry has been on the leading edge of recovering the ancient practices of contemplative spirituality. This has had both positive and negative ramifications, it seems to me. On the one hand, positively it has meant a whole new way of spiritual formation has emerged that has breathed new life into many young people's lives. On the other, more negatively, there has also been some commodification of these practices, whereby they are employed as a kind experimental gimmick, a kind of innovation for innovation's sake coolness factor as their motivating use. In this second use, they are not so much practices as they are neat side-shows intended to win student's attention. They are a commodity to be picked up and put down at our own whim. 

When undertaken, though, without this gimmicky motivation and as a genuine practice in the community of our young people, I share the excitement that lectio divina, and other practices like it, are significantly robust habits by which our student's faith can blossom and grow as it leads into missional action in the world. Because I believe this is so, I want to spend the next month or so leading up to Prelude, focusing on Eugene Peterson's four-fold description of lectio divina. 

In his book, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, Peterson offers this description of lectio divina:

Lectio divina provides us with a discipline, developed and handed down by our ancestors, for recovering the context, restoring the intricate web of relationships to which the Scriptures give witness but that are so easily lost or obscured in the act of writing.
Lectio divina comprises four elements: lectio (we read the text), meditatio (we meditate the text), oratio (we pray the text), and contemplatio (we live the text)... Reading (lectio) is a linear act, but spiritual (divina) reading is not -- any of the elements may be at the fore at any one time (91).

Reading Scripture spiritually (lectio divina) is a robust practice that involves our whole selves. It requires a posture of humility before the text because it believes that this text can and does bear witness to the living God, and through our engagement with this text, we might actually be engaged by God in Christ through God's Spirit. Lectio divina is not an end in itself, because it ushers us outward into living the text, living the story of God. This posture acknowledges the liveliness of Scripture because it recognizes the centrality of God's spirit in this practice. Hence, to truly read Scripture spiritually is to allow ourselves to be called into question by the text, to place ourselves before the text and not just the text before ourselves. 

Over the next four weeks we'll examine all for elements that Peterson highlights in this practice to get a clearer picture of just what it means to read Scripture missionally, and thus be formed for God's mission in the world.

Erik Leafblad

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