Count Your Blessings #46 – Pondering

Ponder: To reflect or consider with thoroughness and care.

I love to sit and ponder. I suppose I’m doing it now as I consider what I’m going to write, but this isn’t true pondering because there is a sense in which true pondering is done with a purpose but doesn’t actually produce anything for a long while. I know some authors ponder over words for days on end, but I’m not that precise. But I do ponder some things, I do consider them over and over again. Many of these pondering haven’t produced anything, and perhaps there isn’t anything to produce other than a sense of pondering in me.

Some translations of the Bible use the word ponder quite a lot particularly in the Psalms:

Praise the LORD! I will thank the LORD with all my heart as I meet with his godly people.

How amazing are the deeds of the LORD! All who delight in him should ponder them.

Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty. His righteousness never fails.

Psalm 111

Another translation uses a slightly different phrase and I love that too:

GOD’s works are so great, worth a lifetime of study–endless enjoyment!

Psalm 111

This Psalm talks about one of the things that I must ponder the most – God’s works. God’s works in my life, God’s works in those around me. God’s works in the broader world and in creation.

Some of the things I ponder go like this, and this is where I reveal my technical side I’m afraid:

If God is outside time and can do anything at any time with no limit to the number of times that He can do something He doesn’t need to be all powerful as well?

How does God constrain His power?

Does Heaven in an way follow the same line of time as the earth? If it doesn’t is Jesus on the earth and in heaven at the same time or is that an irrelevant question?

The point about pondering is that there is endless enjoyment in a lifetime of study. It’s not about quick answers, there may not even be an answer. Pondering is about the joy of laying with the study of something, using that study to broaden the mind to stretch the imagination, to reach beyond ourselves into something or some other place.

Having something to ponder is a wonderful companion when alone on a walk in some beautiful countryside. I could take some music or a radio or any number of electronic companions, but they are nothing compared to a question that requires some pondering.

Much of our current world is about quick answers to quick questions. We have all the information we could ever possibly want available to us. The other day I read a really interesting article on how we are answer rich but question poor and how this was impacting our ability to be creative. We have to learn to delight in the pondering, without it we are just information and not fully human. Some people ponder things for a lifetime and never find an answer, but that’s not the point of the pondering.

I was prompted to write this post after reading Maggi’s post on it earlier today.