Memorizing to Meditation

 July 13, 2022

My prayer partners and I start our times together by reading a psalm. Last week we began Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible; it goes on for 176 verses. It’s an acrostic psalm; each section begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet as a memnonic. Being such a long psalm, we are taking one letter each week. We’ll be here for awhile.

The psalm is a paean of praise for God’s Word, extolling its virtues and values for life. Today’s section was “Beth,” verses 9-16. 

Verse 10 is a plea: “With my whole heart I have sought You; O let me not wander from your commandments!” I wish I could say I have sought God with my whole heart. I’ve done so at times, but there have also been those times of wandering or even deliberately ignoring God’s Word. The results of that have never been good. This section is an interesting interplay of God’s promises and our responsibilities. In verse 11, we are promised the ability to reject sin and live a holy life, but only if we hide God’s Word in our hearts.

I am so grateful for the Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teachers, for Christian Service Brigade, and Youth for Christ in this regard. We were drilled in Bible memorization. I’ve never been very good at it, but it’s the passages I learned as a teenager that have carried me through the years. The older I get, the harder it is to memorize, but this I know: if I don’t have it in my head, I can’t hide it in my heart. So I continue to work on it. It can be slow going, but I need the discipline, and I surely need the Scripture.

This section concludes, 

“I will meditate on your precepts, 

And contemplate your ways.

I will delight myself in your statutes; 

I will not forget your Word.”

I can’t meditate on what I don’t remember, so even if it’s just a single sentence, I’ll say it over and over. I don’t want to take the chance of forgetting God’s Word, for in it is salvation as it invariably directs me to the Savior who himself quoted Scripture in his battle with the devil himself. That’s how Jesus did it, so I don’t think I can go too far wrong doing it his way.