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“Memory Work”
Pastor David K.
Groth
Just about every Wednesday, at around 4:00 pm at Good Shepherd one can hear eight kids making
a bit of a fuss. These are the
ritual groans of protest as I write on the board the memory work for the
eighth grade confirmation class. Something
similar happens twice a week in every one of our classrooms at Good Shepherd Lutheran School; the kids groan as the teacher writes on the chalk board the
memory work for next class. Learning
important biblical passages by heart is still a routine part of instruction
at Good Shepherd. It may seem
counterintuitive in the age of Google, and it has bad connotations. Memory work is thought of as learning
without understanding. But we
believe one of the oldest methods of teaching the faith, is also the best: learning by memory. Hammer it in, in such a way that it will
never be forgotten.
Right about now you
may be thinking the words “brain wash.”
I don’t think so. We force our kids to over-learn multiplication
tables so they are instinctive; you don’t have to stop and think what 3 X 7
equals. Coaches drill skills into
athletes over and over so that certain movements, the swing of a racket,
the posture of a block, are second nature. And I wouldn’t want a surgeon who had to
stop repeatedly in order to consult his anatomy textbook. David Lehmann, editor of “The Oxford
Book of American Poetry”, and professor at New York University, makes his students memorize one poem each
week. He says they complain about
it, but “they will almost certainly learn more about a Shakespearean sonnet
. . . by committing it to memory than by writing a paper analyzing its
structure . . . There is no surer
way to possess a poem” he says, “than to learn it by heart.” Similarly, when you commit biblical passages
to memory, there is a sense in which you own that passage. It’s yours. It belongs to you. No one can take it away.
My eight year old son
is memorizing passages I know he does not yet understand. The meaning of those passages, however,
will catch up with him later. The
sense will sink in when he’s not even aware of it.
Within the Bible
are the words we live by. “Impress them
on your children” says Deuteronomy 6.
“Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the
road, when you lie down and when you get up” (v.7). As parents, that’s our highest calling. Said very simply, what we learn as
children will be what we remember as adults.
The good news is this: Our Lord has remembered us and this memory
has driven him all the way to the cross.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion
on the child she has borne? Though
she may forget, I will never forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15).
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