February 14, 2024 — Personal Reflection as a Spiritual Discipline

Personal reflection – I think our society today is geared for keeping us from doing more personal reflection. When people spend so much time on social media, they are spending an inordinate amount of time looking for the approval of others or looking for the advice of others. Sometimes we need to spend more time on personal reflection, or looking inward and listening to our thoughts, and listening to G-d speaking to us.

Personal reflection can be defined as paying attention to the inner self. The purposes of personal reflection can be myriad. We should do personal reflection to grow in our relationship with G-d, not necessarily to beat ourselves up. Personal reflection forces us to put aside the distractions in our lives and spend valuable time with G-d. We can use this time in prayer, in reading and reflection, or just listening.

We should do personal reflection to spend time praying for and reflecting on the needs of others. As I said, the world we live in gives us many ways to increase our narcissism. Using things like Facebook and other social media allows us to put ourselves out for the world to reflect on our actions, our family and our world. This then also allows us to grown in a dependence upon what others think of us. Instead, when we do personal reflection, we can think of others, pray for others, and speak to G-d about the others in our lives.

Finally, we can do personal reflection for ourselves – but in this case it will be different than the social outlets we use today. When we do personal reflection on ourselves, we listen to only two voices – that is the voice of G-d and our own voice. This type of personal reflection forces us into that difficult conversation that happens when we open ourselves up to G-d. But this conversation can also be very cathartic – because there is nowhere to hide – and this allows us to be honest with G-d in ways we will not be with others.

During this Lenten season, find ways to do more personal reflection – reflecting on your relationship with G-d – reflecting on the needs of others – and reflecting on honesty and repentance.

Pastor Dave