I’d been ignoring Him.
At least I didn’t want to deal with this one thing. My time with theater had shown I could actually
memorize a monologue I once viewed nearly impossible. And the notion had repeated in my head that I
needed to memorize more than just theater lines. Memorization of Scripture would be priority. One day I visited
patients in the hospital, and a lady asked me to write down Scripture for
her family. Suddenly my mind went
blank. No verses from Hebrews. No verses from Psalms. Nothing I’d memorized long ago was coming to
mind, and the emptiness hit hard. How
reliant I had become on a concordance and having a hard-copy Bible at
hand. Yet this emptiness and depth of sorrow
set me on a very determined road. First I
prayed, “Lord, don’t let this family here in the hospital be devoid of Scripture due to my neglect.”
The Lord pointed me to a hard-copy Bible,
so I copied verses, humbly handed them to the family, and proceeded home to begin memorizing Romans 5. Aside from the Bible, one of my all-time favorite books is Fahrenheit
451, in which the firemen take the backwards role of igniting fires. Bradbury makes us think. Toward the end, he introduces us to the bearded men who memorize books. These men memorize to keep their knowledge safe and intact and out of the hands of the firemen. Their minds are
libraries. Today, in real life, I need the wisdom
of the Bible safe and intact in me. The task of memorization has
led me to meditate and more closely appreciate the love of God. How immensely I am pleased to now answer the Lord’s
prompt to memorize. I’ve experienced anew the words of 1
Corinthians 13:4 – “Love is patient, love is kind.” Will you choose to memorize as well?
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