Pondering Pondering

I like the word “ponder.” To me it goes well with the scripture to “Be still and know that I am God.” Pondering requires slowing down, being still, and acknowledging that it is possible to communicate with God. Pondering can bring “revelation and understanding.

Recently I was pondering pondering and was surprised at how many scriptures mentioned both heart and ponder. Things of God involve the heart as well as the head. 

One of my favorite scriptures concerns Mary, mother of Jesus - 
But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart  Luke 2:19

For it came to pass after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot. 1 Nephi 11:1   While I can’t claim to have been taken to a mountain, I can claim to have been caught away in the Spirit in a way that I knew the experience came from God and not my imagination. 

... For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them for the learning and the profit of my children. Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard. 2 Nephi 4: 15-16

Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.   Moroni 10: 3