The New Bottom Line Meditations

Starting with Trinity Sunday Bottom Line Meditations on May 13, 2013

To the readers of my Bottom Line series,

It has been almost a year since I was inspired to start the Bottom Line Meditations series for your study. In this series, my desire has been to lead you to the “how” to unlock the Gospel secrets of spirituality. Hopefully, these meditations have helped you discover the difference reading the Revised Common Lectionary scriptures in a worldly or godly way can make. I have attempted to illustrate this by changing one word in the scripture such that you may begin to look at it differently; from more of a Godly, spiritual point of view rather than reading it from a purely worldly, physical perspective. I have found that the easy way to interpret scripture is to ignore the perspective difference between the original setting, context, or thinking and our setting, context, or thinking today. Hopefully, you have been able to discover the difference, the more spiritual understanding in my estimation, that the one word change can make and have applied this to all of your study of scriptures.

Recently, I received inspiration that it is time to “upgrade” the focus of the Bottom Line Meditation series from discovering spirituality to understanding the grace language of Jesus. Perhaps I could call this spirituality 2.0! Or, probably more appropriately, you have graduated from undergraduate spirituality school and are now beginning your graduate studies on spirituality.

My understanding and the focus of the new Bottom Line Meditations series is that Jesus took legalistic words and gave them a grace meaning. In this new series, I usually will not change any words in the scriptures, but will preface each line with “Think Legalism” or “Feel Grace”. As you read the “Think Legalism” line, set your thinking to interpretation of the scripture strictly from a “what you see” standpoint. Then, just before you read the same words on the “Feel Grace” line, remember that God is Love and Grace and that being in His presence and feeling His Grace and Love can bring you a Peace in any situation. So, feel the grace in the same words and meditate on how your perspective changes when in the Presence of God rather than out of the Presence and thinking rationally.

I invite you to compare the prior “Spirituality” Bottom Line Meditations with the new “Grace Language” Bottom Line Meditations and let me know what you think. You can either email me at paulnanita@sbcglobal.net or fill out the comment form at the end of any of my posts. I would love to hear from you.

Click here to read the introductory text for the original Bottom Line Meditations