the comfort of memorizing the Bible

I was humbled, saddened and encouraged to read this response to my series on memorizing the Bible at The Briefing:

Thank you to Jean for her article on memorizing Scripture.

Yes it seems a little far out of reach for most of us, but the benefits of knowing slabs of Bible passages will pay off.

In January 2011 I sat on a park bench at a caravan park in the south of New Zealand’s south island.

I sat there all day. I was alone—bar the interruption of police as they came to tell me how the search and rescue efforts for my husband were going.

I didn’t know then where my husband was or what state he was in. In my thinking he was late coming out of a walk, which wasn’t unusual!

I didn’t have a Bible with me. No iDevice with the Bible on it.

But God spoke powerfully to me as Psalms came to my mind. One Psalm particularly resonated.

Psalm 139.

I hadn’t intentionally memorized it. But somehow I knew it. And the comfort of that Psalm significantly carried me as later that day it was revealed to me that it was no longer a rescue but a body retrieval. My husband of 23 years had died. But God knew where he was. He had ordained his days.

The power of knowing Scripture later that day was evident as the policeman that had been in charge of the rescue/retrieval of my husband from a remote mountain cliff was a Christian. In the middle of the night with a full moon rising he drove me back to where my children were and as he did he quoted Psalm 121. Tears streamed down my face, and continue to flow, but God spoke powerfully to me that day and continues to do so.

So yes it seems like effort, especially when we are so lazy about doing anything that is hard! But the benefits outweigh the effort!

Elizabeth Poland,

Tasmania, September 2012.