Ann Voskamp, if you don't already familiar with her, is the author of 1000 Gifts.
She writes a beautiful blog and just last week as I was perusing her archives, I stumbled across this post she wrote in January where she encouraged her readers to memorize Romans chapters 1, 8, and 12. (Last year she and her readers memorized the entire Sermon on the Mount.)
Memorize 3 entire chapters from the Bible?
I was intrigued.
One of my goals for 2013 was to memorize 12 Bible verses. And quite honestly, I was already having trouble with that.
What made me think I could memorize 3 entire chapters in a year? Even at just 2 verses a week, the old noggin isn't what it used to be.
Then it hit me. I had been thinking about, praying about, wondering about, what sacrifice to make during Lent.
I'll do it, I thought! I'll do it! This will be my Lenten sacrifice.
They say it takes 21 days of repeating a behavior or activity to form a new habit so I decided that the 40 days of Lent would be a good starting point for this year long endeavor.
So I set out to make my little booklet.
And I began working on memorizing the first two verses.
I have struggled the last six days to get the first two verses to stick. Struggled.
I've recited them while brushing my teeth, while waiting in traffic, while washing dishes.
I've recited them at times I would have normally be reading blogs, or playing Ruzzle, or checking Facebook.
And finally, after 6 days, I think I have the first two verses memorized. Finally. I think.
Tomorrow, I will recite them to Dan and he will sign that he heard them and then I will move on to the next two versus.
Hopefully after the 40 days Lent, I will be in the habit of memorizing and reciting these versus and I will be well on my way to knowing by heart Romans chapters 1, 8, 12 by next February.
If the first two versus are any indicator, it is going to be a long, slightly painful, but ultimately fruitful Lent.
4 comments:
Good for you! I'm trying to memorize some verses from Daniel for my Beth Moore study. I'm having a hard time and have now put a little tune to them. It seems to be the best way for me to memorize.
I bet it gets easier as you go along!
This is such a wonderful project! It's so hard for me, at this point, to see Scripture as something other than an object of heavy study. I'm trying to win it back from that, and maybe something like this is what I need.
Ugh. I wrote a long comment and I think it didn't post! Here's the short version: to help memorize verses, you could try saying the first word, then the first and second, then then the first, second, and third, etc. You keep building until you've said the whole verse. The majority of the words have been repeated so much that it practically gets stuck in your head! So you'd say, "Paul. Paul a. Paul a servant. Paul a servant of. Paul a servant of Christ." You get the drift! Good luck!
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