The September issue of The Lutheran Witness celebrates and offers practical guidance for learning God’s Word by heart.
- From the President: The Word of God never stops giving by Matthew C. Harrison
- Life in the Church Year: The Church Year’s curriculum by Kristen Einertson and Tessa Muench
Print Features
- ‘Write Them on Your Heart’: Why we memorize Scripture by Reed Lessing
- Fruitful Repetition: Practices for learning by heart by Anne and Ryan Tinetti
- How to Read Scripture: God’s Word for us by Mark Love
- ‘Let the Word of Christ Dwell in You Richly’: Reflections on hymn singing and 20 years of ‘Lutheran Service Book’ by Jon D. Vieker
Departments
- Snippets: News from around the LCMS and the world
- Commonplaces: Selections from Scripture, the Confessions and Lutheran hymnody on memorization
- LW Bible Memory Challenge
- Using Lutheran Service Book in the Home
- Searching Scripture: Following the Formula Article IX: Christ’s descent into hell
From the editor
Why do we memorize Scripture?
Perhaps, if we’re honest with ourselves, we must first ask a slightly different question: Do we memorize Scripture?
For me, at least, the answer to this second question is no, not really. I don’t memorize Scripture — not routinely. I have, over the last decade or so (thanks be to God), become an almost compulsive reader of the Bible, so much so that my day never feels right if I skip my morning Bible time. But that daily discipline of “soaking in” rarely translates into “storing up.” I’m content to let the words glide past me each morning without even trying to capture them in my memory.
Perhaps another question we should ask ourselves is this: Why don’t we memorize Scripture? The answer to this one is easy: Because it’s hard. As Anne and Ryan Tinetti remind us in this month’s issue, “It takes work! … All of us need to exert time and energy and commit to regular repetitio if we wish to store up Scripture in our hearts.” In an overstretched and distractible age, few of us can muster the time, effort, intention and focus necessary to commit even short passages to heart.
Yet whenever I do take the trouble, I find it is always worth it. A few months ago, I struggled regularly with insomnia over several weeks. As I lay awake each night, I began to train myself to use the time for prayer, working my way through the Kyrie, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and everything I was feeling anxious about. But what I really found myself craving in the darkness were the Psalms. So I set about memorizing Psalm 23, bit by bit. Those six familiar little verses took me days to commit to memory (my mind isn’t as young and absorbent as it once was), but once I had them locked in, they — and the Gospel comfort they bring — were mine to pull out whenever I needed them. Next on my list: more Psalms.
Why, then, do we memorize Scripture? Not because our salvation depends on it; not because God will reject us if we don’t. We memorize Scripture because it is good — because God’s Word is “perfect, reviving the soul … rejoicing the heart … enlightening the eyes” (Psalm 19). We do it, as Reed Lessing points out, “because the biblical Word connects us to the incarnate Word, the Word made flesh — Jesus our Lord, who comes for us and for our salvation.”
May God bless us all as we seek to store up His Word in our hearts (Psalm 119:11), knowing that His words are “more to be desired … than gold, even much fine gold” (Psalm 19:10).
In Christ,
Rachel Bomberger
Managing Editor, The Lutheran Witness
