Saturday, December 27, 2008

Coming Soon: Mega Memory Month

Last October, a new blog-friend of mine introduced a new blog carnival: Mega Memory Month. Ann Kroeker challenged her readers to choose something big to commit to memory--something longer, more formidable than they had attempted before. I came late to the announcement, but I'm glad that Ann has recently announced the return of Mega Memory Month. She explains:
Each person determined what “mega” meant personally. Some, with more nimble minds offering greater capacity, tackled vast swaths of Scripture; while a few of us nibbled what tidbits we could. Regardless of the actual serving size, I believe we all feasted. We stretched ourselves. We swallowed as much as our systems could handle, and were nourished.
I've experienced firsthand the benefits of memorizing larger sections of Scripture. I was first challenged by Dr. Andrew Davis's wonderful article "An Approach to the Extended Memorization of Scripture." Davis writes of the benefits of memorizing whole chapters or books, rather than single verses:
Jesus said, “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) Paul said “All Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness…” (2 Timothy 3:16) Memorizing individual verses tends to miss intervening verses that the individual does not feel are as significant. Furthermore, most of Scripture is written to make a case… there is a flow of argumentation that is missed if individual verses are memorized. Furthermore, there is also a greater likelihood of taking verses out of context by focusing on individual verses.
If you've never made it a point to work on Scripture memorization, will you join us in January? Ann reassures us:
Nobody is grading or judging us on how well we complete this month-long memory project. But making our intentions public may spur us on to finish successfully.
Let’s take a risk. Stretch ourselves.
Our minds can hold more than we think they can.
I'll be writing more on this soon--meanwhile, I hope you'll consider participating and begin thinking about what you'd like to commit to memory.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to join you! I wish we were friends irl, so we could help each other, encourage each other to memorize Scriptures. I've never had an irl friend who'd commit to it, and it would be so encouraging to hang out with you, someone who really does commit to things. Looking forward to your upcoming posts (or reminders ;*))