One of my favorite verses of Scripture is found in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures (Joshua 1:8 KJV):

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

There’s something direct and simple about that command that the Lord gave to Joshua. And it also happens to be effective to us in these days as well. Many people have the behavior of reading the Bible (I won’t get into statistics about this), but we don’t always hear as much outside of those whom are published what it looks like to meditate – contemplate, consider, debate within ourselves – the meaning of Scripture. 

This is something we’d hear from time to time with those in the pastorate. But, to hear the same from a layperson – someone not with some kind of official capacity to be teaching one or more people – is a bit different than what we are used to. Looking at this verse though, it would seem that its not just meant for the newly established leader, but for those who walk alongside that leader (even if not in a noted capacity) as well.

This past weekend, I had two experiences that brought to my forefront this idea of contemplation with Scripture, and there was an interesting intersection with mobile tech in both cases. In the first, I was speaking with a former pastor of mine (I visited my old church in Philadelphia) and spoke about what it is I’ve been doing with MMM. One of the questions that I asked him was, “how do you use your smartphone besides calls, texts, and an occasional game?” His mention was that he doesn’t do much at this time and my responses was something to the effect of, “have you considered using your smartphone as a means to share your sermon outline before you teach?” I gave him an example of how he could upload all of those sermons to Google Docs, and then simply text the members in attendance right before he gets up to preach the URL for that outline.

The second moment came later on in the same day. My mother had seen my notes in Evernote (especially the handwritten ones, via Tactilis) and remarked that she’d like to try that app on her Nook Color if that were available. So, I took her Nook Color, and showed her how to search for the app then download it. She then got a message noting she needed a memory card. So I took an 8GB memory card that I’d been using as an archive of my previous mobile, copied its contents to my 32GB USB memory key using just my Nokia N8 (the N8 can connect to a USB memory key and also has a microSD card slot), and formatted the card so that she could use it in her Nook Color. After doing that, I walked with her through the setup process of her Evernote account and she was ready to start writing her notes in Evernote. I had also added the Evernote app to her Windows laptop so that she’d have her notes in both places ready to access as needed. 

In both cases, the central point was notes. How do we utilize this mobile and web technology to endear us towards contemplative moments in faith? I think that both situations give us two ways to approach it. We can play the role of a pastor-teacher and have some kind of outline or memory points ready to share that are simply shared directly to a mobile using SMS or MMS. And then we have the second where a person should be able to leverage their computing devices, network-services, and various methods of writing notes (pictures, typed text, etc.) to record and retrieve those notes.

One of the things my mother liked in my use of Evernote was that I had the ability to search across all of my notes from any device I was on. My pastor mentioned that he has over a half decade of sermons typed up, but they are simply sitting on his computer not shared with anyone unless he directly sends it to them. What can we realize in this life of faith when we take both of those matters and put ourselves towards utilizing the tools we have to be in that position ot meditate on the text everyday? Could you imagine the kinds of walls that would be ready to come down in our lives if that were to happen?