Memorization

I'm a listening leader at the Awana Truth in Training Program at my church. Anyone who is familiar with Awana knows that there is a huge emphasis on memorizing verses, Biblical definitions, and answers to spiritual questions.

I'm a big advocate for memorization, especially at a young age. It's refreshing to be able to have a verse pop into your mind the moment you need it. I am reminded of the persecuted who have had the Word of God taken away from them, so all that they have left of God's promises is what they have memorized. Memorizing scripture, in my opinion, is also a wonderful way to pray without ceasing. With all these benefits, I do have one problem with memorization: people can use it as a measurement of how "holy" one is, and can even use it to judge themselves. This causes a separation from a true relationship with God and mere religion. As a leader, it is always a challenge to try to balance memorization without having my kids feel inferior or, worse yet, not taking anything they memorize to heart.

Even though I was never in Awana, I do remember lots of memorization as a kid. In fact, I'm not really sure what my motivation was to memorize verses as a child, but I'm glad I did. In junior high youth group, we could memorize verses and do a few other things to earn a free trip to Six Flags Marine World, so naturally I had to take that challenge. In high school, as part of our spiritual preparation for our mission trips to Peru, we had to memorize verses, including all of Romans 12. I never had any motivation to memorize verses once I entered college. I guess it's hard to bribe adults to say verses. (Though I would still say a bunch of verses in exchange for a trip to Six Flags!)

Last spring, when I still had Netflix, I was going through the spiritual movies section and ended up watching a film about a foster child with cancer and his struggle to find love before he died. The father figure at his group home was a strong Christian man, who said that, ever since he became a Christian, he memorized one new verse every week, so by that time he had memorized over 1000 verses. (And yes, this is based on a true story.) That inspired me to memorize more, but I thought it would be more meaningful to memorize a whole book. I decided to start with James, but I only memorized through chapter 1 before the busyness of summer camp overtook my life.

Lyvvie came into my office yesterday to say a few sections from her Awana book. As she studied the next section, I mentioned something about memorizing things before. I opened up BibleGateway and had her see if I could still recite Romans 12 and James 1. Let's just say that I needed a few more helps than what Awana generally allows!

With my random day off in the middle of the week today (I choose to take Wednesdays off because that's one of the days that it's almost impossible to "accidentally" schedule me to work, unlike Monday which is also a day I try to take off), I decided to do some reading. This is the first year that I'm actually trying to read through the entire Bible. I also decided to do some other reading, since I haven't read a book in months. I picked up Twentysomething, which I started back when I was in Tennessee but haven't read since. It mentioned the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Now, I may have gone to a Presbyterian preschool, but I grew up very non-denominational, and even now that I'm involved in the C&MA, there are still no real universal church guidelines. I had never heard about the Westminster Shorter Catechism until last year when I was reading a different book. Now that it seems to appear in all my books, I decided to check it out.

In Awana, kids often are asked a question that they have to memorize the answer to. I thought the Westminster Shorter Catechism would be a good "grown-up" version of that. I'm not setting goals on it since I seem to fail on those (like I did with James), but I will try to memorize each one at a time until I get it. So today, I started memorizing question number one:

What is the chief end of man?
Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

I hope to see this memorization come to mind in His perfect timing.