For many Christians, the word meditation carries uncertainty. Some associate it with Eastern spirituality. Others with psychological techniques or emotional self-regulation. Still others avoid it altogether, unsure whether it belongs within Christian faith at all. And yet meditation, in its most essential sense, lies at the very heart of Jesus’ own teaching—though He never names it as a technique. He names it as a way of living.

Few instructions from the Master point more directly to this interior way than His simple and unsettling words: “Take no thought for your life.” These words are rarely heard as an invitation to prayer or contemplation, yet they describe precisely the interior posture that Christian meditation has always sought to embody. Not effortful concentration. Not mental control. But a release—a letting go of the constant movement of thought by which we attempt to secure ourselves and define who we are.

Jesus is not speaking here about carelessness, nor is He dismissing responsibility. He is addressing identity. When He speaks of “your life,” He is not referring to the LIFE He later promises and gives. He is pointing to the personal me sustained by thought—the inner narrator that plans, worries, evaluates, and seeks meaning through mental effort. “Your life” is the life lived inside commentary. It is the life that believes it must think constantly in order to remain safe, significant, and complete.

Christian meditation begins precisely where this commentary loosens its grip. It is the practice—not of stopping thought by force—but of no longer giving thought the authority to define who we are. In this sense, Christian meditation is not about doing something new. It is about ceasing to do what has never truly given LIFE.

This is why Jesus does not say, “Think differently,” but “Abide in ME.” Abiding is not analysis. It is not problem-solving. It is not positive thinking sanctified by Scripture. It is a resting of attention in the Living Presence that precedes thought altogether. Beneath the restless movement of the personal me there is already a stillness that is not empty, but full—full of Presence, full of Being, full of LIFE.

Here the ancient Psalm comes alive in a new way: “Be still, and KNOW that I AM God.” Stillness is not the goal. KNOWING is. And this KNOWING is not conceptual. It does not arise from explanation or belief alone. It emerges naturally when the effort to manage life through thought softens. Stillness is not something we create; it is what remains when we stop interfering. In that stillness, KNOWING reveals itself.

Christian meditation, then, is not about silencing the mind as an achievement. It is about recognizing the silence from which thought is heard. It is about learning to rest attention not in the stream of thought, but in the Living Field of I AM in which all thoughts arise and pass. This resting is not passive. It is deeply alive. It is resonance rather than effort.

When this practice is approached rightly, fear begins to lose its authority. Fear depends on identification with thought—on futures imagined and pasts remembered. As attention settles into abiding, fear may still appear, but it no longer defines the one who sees it. Thought continues. Responsibilities remain. But identity is no longer anchored in the personal me. Life begins to be lived from a deeper center.

This is why Christian meditation does not lead away from Christ, but into Him. Not as an idea to contemplate, but as LIFE to be lived. “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the LIFE.” The Way is not a mental path. The Truth is not a proposition to defend. The LIFE is not something the personal me can generate. It is received through abiding. Meditation, in this light, is not preparation for Christian life; it is Christian life, lived from its Source.

This reflection is offered as a beginning rather than a conclusion. The question Can a Christian meditate? opens not toward an argument, but toward a path, one that unfolds slowly through the sayings and invitations of the Master himself. In the months ahead, this series will explore what might be called the art of Christian meditation, not as a system to master, but as a way of listening again to Jesus’ words from the inside. Each reflection will take a direct saying of the Master and allow it to become an invitation into lived experience rather than abstract belief.

We will begin by returning again and again to the release of anxious thought, learning what it means to give no thought for one’s life, and allowing stillness to open into KNOWING rather than explanation. From there, we will explore the simplicity Jesus points toward when he invites us to become as little children, the intimacy implied in the call to abide, and the quiet courage required to enter the inner room where prayer is no longer performed but lived. Along the way, we will listen more deeply to the words “I AM the Way,” not as doctrine to defend, but as Presence to be encountered, and we will consider what it means for the eye to become single, for resistance to soften, and for peace to be received rather than achieved.

These reflections will be accompanied by guided meditations, offered not as replacements for prayer, but as gentle supports for inhabiting prayer more fully. Each practice will arise directly from the words of Jesus themselves, allowing discernment to grow not through fear or comparison, but through fruit. The intention is not to persuade, but to invite, trusting that what is true reveals itself through lived encounter. If this question has stirred something in you, you are invited to walk this path slowly, attentively, and without haste, allowing the Master’s words to teach you in the way he always intended—through Presence, trust, and LIFE discovered from within.