The dog days of August are upon us, the days when it gets so hot and humid no one wants to do anything but sit in the air conditioning.  I plan on doing my share of that.   However, while we are all just sitting around, I suggest that we can make good use of the time by doing something that I believe Christians have gotten away from.   That something is meditating.  Meditating has gotten a bad rap recently because the meaning of the word has been abused by certain religions.  They claim that when meditating we should empty our minds of everything.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  David was a man after God’s own heart and he spent a lot of time meditating, which he talked about in the Psalms.  From the Psalms we find that we should be meditating about the following:

The Law of the Lord                                  Ps 1:1-3
God’s unfailing love                                     Ps 48:8-10
God’s miracles, mighty works, and wonders    Ps 77:11-13, Ps 119:26-28
God’s precepts, ways, and decrees               Ps 119:14-16, 22-24

This is a lot to think about, but August should give us plenty of opportunity.

Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

The changing of the seasons almost always brings my mind back to the passage above from Romans. God is constantly using nature to reinforce what Scripture teaches us about Him. Spring is a good time of year to learn how God can restore life. In the past couple of weeks the hostas and ferns in my garden have been growing rapidly. Now there are clumps of green when before there was only brown dirt and mulch. The ferns are particularly remarkable. In the winter there is only what looks like a dead, brown stump left over from the fern the previous fall. It looks like it has no chance of living again. However, once it feels the warmth of spring the fronds rapidly uncurl into the fern. However, God has something even more amazing in store for us.

Read the following passage from I Corinthians 15.

The Resurrection Body

What is important to you?  What are the priorities in your life?  For most, these are easy questions.  Answers of God, Christ, your family members such as your spouse, children, parents, your friends, your health, your job, etc. all come quickly to mind.

God teaches us through the Bible how we should begin prioritizing what is important to us.  In 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 the Bible states:  “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.”

“First importance” means exactly what it says, that nothing else comes before it.  God wants you to put your faith and belief in Jesus Christ first in your life.  In Ephesians 2:20 Christ is described as being the chief cornerstone.  From this and other scriptures, God is teaching us that the foundation and building of your life should be based on Christ for it to be solid and sound.  Christ is of first importance.  You may think that you should put your family, such as your children or your spouse, first, and while God teaches us that they also are very important, they should not take the place of Christ and be of first importance.