Today’s Devotional: “The Lost Art of Pondering”

Have you ever read something or had a thought and immediately forgotten what it was? No, it isn’t necessarily a sign of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Rather, it may simply be that you’ve never learned the art of pondering.

In Greek, to ponder means to put one thing with another. Webster’s defines it as “To weigh in the mind, to put one thing against another, to review mentally, to think about, to examine carefully.”

To ponder means to take the time to store these thoughts and important information deep within the recesses of our hearts and minds.

This was Mary’s testimony on that first Christmas morning when she heard the shepherds recount their experience.

“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

Later, when Mary and Joseph found young Jesus in the temple, He said, “Didn’t you know I would be in my Father’s house and about My Father’s business?” It says that Mary “treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:49, 51).

Mary knew how to ponder. She stored up the things she had experienced, seen, and heard, keeping them safe and secure within her mind and heart. She mulled them over and processed them, as if continually pulling out and counting her treasure.

She weighed them over and over, thinking deeply about their significance, and later drew upon them. This is seen in Jesus’s first miracle, turning water into wine. When the wine was finished, she told Jesus, and while Jesus said His hour had not yet arrived, she told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5).

Pondering is a good thing to do, but it takes time and discipline. We need to step away from the world for a while, let our minds review what we’ve seen and heard, and allow those memories to continually speak about Jesus and inspire us to continue on this journey of faith.