ja''eghqa'ghach - Meditation

chaw' the mu'mey vo' wIj nuj je the ja''eghqa'ghach vo' wIj tIq taH acceptable Daq lIj leghpu', joH'a', wIj nagh, je wIj redeemer.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock, and my redeemer. Psalm 19:14

(click for podcast version)

Inside and OUT. That's the focus of this verse, the final verse of Psalm 19. It is a good one to commit to memory, and, I think, makes a good start to a day - this devotion to ensuring that what we say, and what we say within our hearts meets with God's approval.

The Klingon word I use here for meditate is one I've mentioned before, in Psalm 1: ja''eghqa'ghach. The Hebrew is, higgayown a murmuring sound, and appears fewer than half a dozen times in the Bible; it's a form of the somewhat more common word used in Joshua 1:8 and Psalm 1, "hagah," to murmur - the sense there is to review, rehearse, recite, and remember God's words by saying them over and over to oneself.

Originally 'meditate', not being a common word in the World English Bible (hardly more than a dozen times) was not included in the Klingon Language Version. Since working on these studies, I've added it, using the word "ja''eghqa'" to carry the meaning. "ja'," to report, "'egh," -to-oneself, and "-qa'," again: ja''eghqa': report-again-to-oneself, meditate.

Now I've spoken before - and probably will again - how I've found Bible Memory, memorizing verses of scripture, a powerful spirtual resource. As I write this, we're in the season of Lent and for my devotions this year I've been using the Gospel of Mark, picking one verse out of each chapter to commit to memory. One nice thing about that is that it's giving me a framework to remember the whole Gospel, but the other thing is that this series of verses give me a "meditation" that I can focus on, to review, rehearse, recite, and remember God's words. What better way to strive that "the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable....?" I'd never claim it's the perfect way to do that - but it IS a start.

The Psalmist here recognizes our life is not just a matter of the outside - our thought life, our cares, our dreams - the things we dwell on, the things we may mutter about - those matter to God as well. As Spurgeon notes:

Words of the mouth are mockery if the heart does not meditate; the shell is nothing without the kernel; but both together are useless unless accepted; and even if accepted by man, it is all vanity if not acceptable in the sight of God.

I need to remember this, that my INNER life, just like my life in the world, is carried out before His gaze - and recognizing that, how can I help but turn in prayer to ask:

chaw' the mu'mey vo' wIj nuj je the ja''eghqa'ghach vo' wIj tIq taH acceptable Daq lIj leghpu', joH'a', wIj nagh, je wIj redeemer.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock, and my redeemer. Psalm 19:14