My Dear Friends,
I want to share just one thought with you, and it's this: The Lost Art of Christian Musing. It's strange how some particular words embed themselves in the mind for a time after you have read them, and that word "musing" has been with me now for a good few months since reading it in Luke's Gospel. It was that time when John the Baptist was conducting his ministry in the wilderness of Judaea and when "all Judaea" as it says "had gone out to him." As they watched John's actions and listened to his preaching, it says, they "mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ or not." They "mulled" it over, to use another picturesque phrase: they "pondered" it.
Now I wonder have the believers today lost the art of "musing" on the things of the Lord and of this age in which we find ourselves? The Psalmist David certainly knew all about the art in his own day: "I muse on the works of thy hands," he told the Lord. And, in the only other place that the word occurs in the Scriptures, it has a wealth of advice to offer to us in these days of perplexity: "My heart was hot within me," says David, in verse 3 of Psalm 39; "while I was musing the fire burned …". David was perplexed as he saw the prosperity of the wicked in the land of the living, and he resented their progress in this world at a time when he himself seemed to be downcast. His Heart was "hot" within him, as he says himself; his old carnal desires and ambitions were getting more and more kindled, and the more he "mused", the hotter the oven burned – "While I was musing the fire burned." But, then, his "musing" moved from the superficial to the spiritual, and the outcome was a very different thing from the commencement: "Then spake I with my tongue, Lord make me to know mind end …". It drove him to the Lord for His counsel. And "superficial musing," you see, can be a dangerous thing, for that amounts to little more than a carnal assessment of a given situation; so we must muse and muse until it takes us to God for the answer to whatever we are musing on.
Old John Bunyan knew all about "musing." When he was under the conviction of sin by God's Holy Spirit he "mused." "At another time," he tells us, "I sat by the fire in my house, and was musing on my great wretchedness …". And how we could do with gospel preaching in our day that would make the unconverted "muse" on the things of eternity and of their God. And Bunyan went on "musing" the whole of his christian life, for, as he says himself in his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," "… the whole of the Bible is one long muse …". "I mused, I mused, I mused," he says.
I wonder, brethren and sisters, why we have lost this art of Christian musing in our churches today? As you probably know, when we place the letter "A" in front of a word it can act as a negative to that word. Thus, as a "Theist" is a person who believes in God, an "A-theist" is a person who does not believe in God and says there is no God. I wonder! I wonder, have we so little "musement" in our churches today because we have had so much "A-musement"? I wonder!
Yours musingly,
W. J. Seaton (March 1969)
