Memorization

Psalm 75, 76 • Psalm 23, 27
Num. 3:1-13 • Gal. 6:11-18 • Matt. 17: 1-13

It has been many, many years since I saw the inside of a Sunday school class for children, but I doubt that they still offer prizes for memorizing passages of Scripture. Nor, for that matter, would I imagine that students in our schools are required to recite from memory the Gettysburg Address or any other text from our civic canon. Why memorize, when, young or old, we can look anything up on the internet with a few keystrokes?

I will spare you an academic disquisition on the value of memorization for its own sake, but will instead assert that pondering, memorizing, and keeping in mind certain passages of scripture can deepen our experience of the holy and enrich our spiritual practice. 

We have no better examples of this claim than the two Psalms assigned for this evening, Psalms 23 and 27. Many of us have at least faint memories of learning the 23rd Psalm and perhaps even the 27th. Quite possibly, for old timers like me, we learned it in the King James version: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters; he restoreth my soul.” (23: 1-2). Bringing to mind and bringing to speech psalms of praise like these, and to psalms of Lament as well, does not give us an explanation for our condition, be it good or bad, much less words for successfully bargaining with God. But it does allow us to put ourselves into the text and to listen quietly to what God may be saying to us through snippets of scripture that we may not have thought about for many, many years.

Written by Bob McMath

Bob McMath is looking forward to getting back to church and to choir (properly masked, of course).