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Contemplation. Contemplation is act of sitting in presence of God with total attention and concentration on God. After a time of prayer, we just sit with God.
If you preach or teach, you should use lectio divina as part of your preparation. Sit with text away from analysis and exegesis, and let God speak to you through his word. A sermon or class could follow this four-part cycle.
For a sermon, preacher could read passage, describe paths he or she explored during meditation and insights found, and offer a prayer to God based on meditation. After, there could be a congregational period of silence for contemplation.
When I teach, I often use lectio divina as an outline. I read passage from my Bible and ask two or three others to read same passage, but from different translations. Then I help class to “meditate”: I ask what words or images struck them from reading, what they noticed or didn’t noticed, what feelings they had as they read, or what was most surprising in text. We follow these threads, learning from each other, and then conclude with prayer.
Lectio divina is a very helpful discipline for spiritual growth. If reader practices lectio divina often, she will begin to plumb depths of her soul and her relationship with God. The single greatest facet of lectio divina is its ability to create a mindset that can actually listen to and for God.
Jeremy M. Hoover is a part-time minister and writes full-time in Windsor, Ontario. Visit his website at http://hoovermarketing.info/amg/introduction.htm to learn how he supports his writing with an online business.