For a week, longer, I wake with these fears choking hard.
Fears pushing me into the pit.
And it comes while I struggle to get out of bed, comes early as the light pries back the dark, words we’ve been committing to heart — and I murmur them, hold onto them like a lifeline tossed:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the… ”
And I smooth out the bedsheets and everything calms, His Word stilling my storm…
That is what we are: Blessed. Blessed. Blessed.
I’m learning by heart the heart of God and this is what calms my heart. I run my hand down the coverlet and there are no wrinkles left.
The old Beatitudes print that I found at the back of a thrift store, it hangs on the wall in the hall. The frame’s all chipped, but the glass reflects all this light.
I’ve been writing the Sermon on the Mount verses on the chalkboard by the farmtable. The whole tribe says it together loud and messy before we leave the table and after we stack the pile of licked clean plates.
We make Memorize the Mount booklets — Matthew 5-6 & 7 — only 2-3 verses a week, — 2 0r 3 truth kernels at a time – and we carry them around in our pockets.
Because the thing is: Will I meditate on His Word or my worries?
Memorize the Mount — this is what pulls out of the pit.
Memorize the Mount — and memorize the way up, the way higher up and deeper into Christ.
Memorize the Mount and mount up on wings.
On the front porch by the swing, the juncos eat corn kernels, 2 or 3 at a time and then fly.
As I cut out the Mount verses to make up our memorization booklets… I read the dates when we will memorize these 2 verses, those three.
On Week 10: March 5th – that’s the week of Dad’s birthday and the snow might be melting and we’ll be memorizing, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven…”
And Week 37: Sep 10th — that will be the kid’s first full week back to school, this is will be what’s up on the chalkboard to memorize: “Therefore do not be anxious…”
And when the leaves are falling off the trees in late October, and we’ll be thinking of thanksgiving, I realize we’ll be memorizing: “…how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.”
And that whole intimidating year that came knocking on January 1st full of expectations and I had no idea how to rise to it? That I’ve been scared to answer? That whole year looks different when I see it through the assurance of His Word. I can only keep pace with it all when I keep company with Christ – day in and day out.
This is how you make the calendar for the year — you set Christ at the center.
You mark time by every word that proceeds from His mouth.
This is the resolution the new year needs — a revolution. A turning every day to Christ.
When I wash that stack of dishes, I say it quietly, turning the plate slowly in hand, a prayer… “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Time memorizing Scriptures is perhaps more important than quiet time — because when we fill our hearts with His Word, we can fill all of our hours with His Word — and “quiet time” can then become all of our time.
The wind from the north, it settles down quiet as the sun rises.
After breakfast, we say it again in unison: “Blessed are… blessed are… blessed are…“
What the heart knows by heart is what the heart knows … and the beat of those “blesseds,” it like a heart beat of its own —
Steady and calm and strong.
“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night,
so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it;
for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.” ~Joshua 1:8, NASB
2. Print and either have comb bound (cards are formatted to give space for comb binding), for ease of flipping cards, propping at the sink, etc.
3. Alternatively, cut and paste into a booklet like a pocket Moleskine
4. Tick off little square boxes for each day of memory heart commitment
5. Find a partner to recite to — have them sign each week on the allotted line
(only *two to three short * verses a week – the verses are in the ESV version & take a bit to load. Thank you for grace!)
{You can join us in community on facebook for encouragement — and I’ll be posting audio updates and encouragements throughout the year on the Facebook page and here on the blog with link-ups so you can share your own memorization– consider joining us?}
In making to-do lists to run our lives, why not make time to let God’s Word revolutionize our lives? Because making time to memorize His Word is putting the first things first.
If we fail to keep His Word in mind, we may simply fail. In the age of Google, who still memorizes God? Are we losing a way of life… and losing our way?
“What a heart knows by heart is what a heart really knows,” urges Dennis Lennon. And what the heart knows by heart is all that can calm the heart. Direct the heart. Strengthen the heart. What do our hearts really know? Will we who claim to be believers of the Word commit to shaping our lives with His Letters?
Committing the Holy to heart is the way we commune with the Holy Himself.
Scripture repetition is the way we daily revive our faith, the slow pumping of the Word of Life into the lungs with the breath of His Words.
And for the disciples of Christ, this Scripture Memorization isn’t a a one-time hurtle — but a life-long habit. A way of living to live the Way of Christ.
“We want this to be a discipline we practice for the rest of our lives.Think marathon, not sprint.” writes Beth Moore. “Never — NOT ONCE — have I ever known anyone to get to the end of a Scripture memory commitment and say that it didn’t make any real difference. Not a single time.”
So this Commitment Booklet: committing our hearts to Him and His Words to heart.
Seven Ways of Highly Effective Bible Memorization*
1. Old before New
Always take the old paths. Begin each day by reviewing the memorized verses first before learning the next verse. The goal is retention not accumulation.
2. Rinse and Repeat
And again. The only way to retain learned verses is to review them again and again over an extended period of time. Everyday’s memorization rhythm: Rinse and repeat.
3. Location, Location, Location
Like the mantra in real estate is location, location, location, so it is for really remembering: memorize the location of each verse. Memorize each verse number and don’t skip it. This is paramount and makes it much easier to memorize long passages and not inadvertently skip verses when reciting whole chapters. Location!
4. Take a Mental Screen Shot
Use your mental point and shoot and take a brain “photograph” of the verse. Read each new verse several times, hiding one word at a time, burning each word into your mind like light onto film.
5. Preach it
To yourself. Speak your memory verses to yourself aloud. Preach it aloud to the soul that needs it the most — our own — and say each verse with emotion and feeling. Whispering it while driving, walking, working not only is an easy way of reviewing and memorizing, it’s fulfilling God’s call to meditate on His Word day and night. And saying each verse aloud is a way to work the words deep into our memory: His Words never return void.
6. Repeat it for 100
For 100 consecutive days repeat aloud your memory work — all the verses, or the chapter, or the whole book. This is painless and demands no extra time: do it first thing every morning while getting ready for the day — in the shower, getting dressed, making the bed etc. Repeat it for 100!
7. Sabbath Sanctuary to see the weeds
After your Repeat it for 100, take the last Sunday of every month and make a sabbath sanctuary to read through your memory work. This will help you to “see the weeds” — any mistakes that have crept into your recitation of longer projects/chapters/books. Soak in His Word on a Sabbath — pluck out some weeds. Commit your heart — and mind —- to Him again.
“I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding… than memorizing Scripture… No other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends…” ~Charles Swindoll
Learning the ART of Memorizing
Attend
Attend to the verse. Do whatever it takes to attend to the verse and work those brain muscles. If you have to act it out, draw it up, write it down, or tape it everywhere. Make up actions and sign-language to correspond with the verse. Listen it a recording of the book of Colossians on CD/MP3. Listen in the car, while doing dishes, going for a walk. For children: Draw the verse in pictures. Fill in the blank. Write it down several times. Close your eyes and see the words.Do whatever it takes to Attend.
Review to Renew
Repeat. Recite. Recap. Reiterate. And then…. Recite to an accountability partner weekly. Each day, take just five minutes to review verses learned last week. Learning is important…but reviewing is paramount to retention. Repeating God’s Word renews.
Tie
Tie Daily Memorizing to Daily Duties. Tie reciting to routines: when you brush teeth, comb hair, make the bed, use the time to savor His Sweet Word. Tie memorizing to meal times. Bind Scripture learning to laundry, labor and living. Tying daily memorizing to daily duties is the living of Deuteronomy 6:7: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Tie His Word to your life. Tie.
So goes the ART of Memorizing. And our motivation to keep memorizing? “Guard my words as your most precious possession… ” Pr. 7:2 (LB) “Your promises to me are my hope. They give me strength in all my troubles; how they refresh and revive me!” (Ps. 119:49 LB)
Other memory projects online: Memorizing Philippians by Easter (we considered this *brilliant* offering, but thought for some in our faith family, memorizing this many verses a week might be a hard start? We thought we could do two verses a week with Colossians with a schedule that covers a whole year.)
For the Next 3 Weeks: The Practice of Love How do we love in difficult places? Our husbands? Our children? How do we live out the greatest of commandments? We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….
Today, if you’d like to share with community The Practice of of Love … just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post….. If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
I ‘m tired and worn by noon when I sit there beside him and he peels back the skin of his orange in the light.
He does this everyday after noon meal and he does it slow.
I feel slow and there are kids and lessons and laundry and everything else.
I’m trying to hold on.
The curve of the peel, it cleaves to the sweet, and it’s the skin of the thing that he holds in his hand.
There are things that cleave:
Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God; him shalt thou serve, and to him shalt thou cleave, and swear by his name. (Deu. 10:20)
You shall fear Him.
You shall serve Him.
You shall cleave to Him. Fear, serve, cleave.
The skins absorb the light and his hands fill with sun. I could fill.
That word “cleave,” it’s dabaq in Hebrew. Dabaq, the same word used to describe how a man cleaves to his wife so that the two become one. Cleave to Christ.
I watch the hands of the man I married, and I know their ways, the way of the man. These hands that hold me.
Dabaq is also tied to the Hebrew word debeq — meaning bodily joint. There are things that cleave: We’re called to cleave as as close to Him as the bones cleave to the skin (Job 19:20). Cleave to Christ.
There are things I peel it all back to: When one’s intimate with Christ, what can intimidate? And the way to be more obedient to Christ is to be more intimate with Christ.
He must have felt it, how I am watching his hands, because the Farmer looks up from the skins he’s holding, looks up at me watching him. I smile and he winks — reaches over with one hand and touches mine.
Living with a belief in God, this is very far from living with God as your Beloved.
We warm in this noon light like sun-baked stones and his hand lingers in mine. The other hand weighed by his orange, like this rock from the sun.
That is how it is: This space is an ocean of grace and Christ is the Rock and the weight of His love plunges us deep — deeper and deeper into God.
I rest my hand in his and they’re right there on his plate, all the skins, all the ways I could slip out of mine and be found in His.
And in the light, you can see it — how it’s there on each peel –
how the flesh of the orange clings right to the skin.
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“The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the souls of the redeemed men and women is the throbbing heart of the New Testament.”
~A. W. Tozer
“Seek every day to have closer communion with Him who is your Friend…
True Christianity is not merely believing a certain set of dry abstract propositions: it is to live in daily personal communication with an actual living person – Jesus Christ.
‘To me’, said Paul, ‘to live is Christ.’ ” (Phil 1:21).
In the middle of a stiff winter wind, she asks to go to the beach.
That’s where she says she wants to celebrate the turning of her calendar year.
To stand on the frozen snow and turn her face directly into whatever is coming this way.
We’re the only ones there.
Nothing can mean nothing, and everything means something. Yes, everything.
We walk the long boardwalk, our footsteps echoing hollow. She will be 61 this year.
We stand on iced sand hemmed with white snow and she says nothing, just gazes out at bared waters. I don’t ask her what she’s thinking.
The sunlight seems paled, hardly there in the numbing cold.
I do watch the way her hair moves in the wind, white waves of their own.
We wander down to where the waves crashes on the stones. The water breaking its way on the unwavering.
Does her silence say this, that this was the way to live? The water lets go again and again on the granite, this oceanic surge of song, this symphonic crescendo. Is there anything more beautiful than the wild surrender to the rock?
The song is always found in the surrender.
Mama knew there’d be days like these, when I’d see. How many more years do I have Mama to walk the winter shore?
Her hair is whiter than winter and is this the season we’re already in? I want spring again. I feel like the child, our shoulders touching here at the sea.
There’s a whole lifetime of memories here at the lake and how many Sunday picnics of fried chicken have we had right up there at the lighthouse? She’d serve extra helpings of green coleslaw and I’d pump the swing high and I could see how we might, soar straight out over the lake. There’s a time when you think nothing will end.
I lean into her and she leans into me, and we’re warmer like this, close. Doesn’t there have to be more than a decade left of this? And there doesn’t have to be anything. The waves keep breaking. Couldn’t she stay until she’s 117?
When you wake to losing someone, you win love.
When you realize that what you have, you will lose — you win real eyes. You win grateful joy.
It comes across the water and I turn to face it directly: It’s only when you realize everyone you love will one day leave you— that you really begin to love. I reach over for Mama’s hand and she does that, she squeezes mine softly and that says more… most.
Someday, it is possible, I could stand here on my own 61st. I can close my eyes and almost see that.
How then she will be the memory already flown across the waters. How the song will sing on and I will hear notes that were long hers.
And it comes, a wave over me: How I will miss her.
That may be it: The way to experience a moment of unlimited elation — is to take a moment to imagine unexpected limitation.
Close your eyes long and imagine days without sight. And you open them to a brighter light. Imagine no water. And the next cold glass quenches like desert rain. Envision life without the loveliness of those you love — and you see how much you love.
Her half smile there in the wind, it makes me half hurt, her pure worn beauty.
There’s a way to wake up and not to live numb.
The way to love life is to imagine losing it.
He who loses his life finds it.
The water keeps giving away to the shore.
One day, all this will be gone. The sun, it seems so strong now, bright across water.
Mama, she lets it blow her hood right back and I don’t feel numb and there is a theological term for this, all this:
Grace.
Fullblown grace.
Standing there, her and I, we watch as it comes straight across the waters, as it comes directly this way.
Us here and and alive and in awe that any of this is at all …
The point is? Just count any 3 gifts a day — to count 1000 gifts in a year. That’s all. Any way that works for you! Just count your blessings!
And yes — we’ll be updating the blog with more information about the draw for the Nikond90 camera for those who complete the dare and count 1000 gifts in 2012!Open our eyes, Lord, Open our eyes! The Whole Earth is fully of Your Glory! }
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Free Printables : 3 Ways to Find Joy this week
1. A Year of Graces {A Free 12 Month Gratitude Calendar} Click to print here
2. Count all His Gifts Wherever You Are: {One Thousand Gifts Free App}:
Will you join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts?
Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
When the Farmer slumps against the door frame, slides to the floor, mumbles that he needs me to take him to Emergency, I nod mute.
I haven’t the faintest idea how I’m going to get him there.
In that exact moment, four of our six children wage desperate tummy revolts. I shuttle to each squirmish with cold cloths, courage words, a prayer whispered in the ear of the weary and I keep breathing and I keep thanking that I alone am well, here, willing.
Sickness can unveil a healthy love.
The Farmer’s six foot frame trembles, his lips purple blue, his skin ashen. He writhes and shudders, the flu turning him limp green from the inside out. He lays on the floor, waiting for me, the help meet, to help.
I must clear the head, I must think.
I do what wise women do. I call my mama.
It’s 12:30 am and I don’t know if Mama sleeps, but she answers on the second ring and I remember my manners and I say please. Yes, she’ll come, she’ll take him, she’ll be right there.
Wisps of her white hair peeking out from under her hat, she slips in here in the black of a winter night. His bulk leans on her white age and she helps him to her car. I stand at the window, their headlights threading away.
I tend to babies here. I think of him and Mama there.
I wipe a little one’s curls from the sticky sick damp of her forehead. It’s nearly three a.m. and she’s been hours and still she fights. I gaze into her little face, her sad blue eyes begging mine for relief, and I stroke her hair and I give her all I have.
“I so love you.”
Her little fevered hand pats my cheek.
We are face to face.
She whispers it quiet.
“And we’ll always be together, ‘cause we love and ‘cause of heaven and ‘cause of Jesus.”
She closes eyes tired. I cup her face long.
This is it, all that is eternal, all that will endure time and winds and all the ages. Heaven and Jesus and love.
They may not etch today’s accomplishments on memorial stone, but the thing is granite erodes anyways. And quiet people know it so we get up every day and we make the porridge and wash the underwear and pay the bills and tend to the hurting and we etch the love on the hearts, that which beats on without end and we pulse throughout the universe.
There’s a way to do work that lasts forever. Just do everything with love.
Mama brings the Farmer home in the dark still, and IV and Gravol and grace have won the war and he drags weak to bed. I keep the night vigil.
In the morning, he tells me that the doctor who nursed his mama when she was dying of leukemia had been the doctor on call last night, who held his arm while the nurse poked.
The nurse kept asking him if he wanted his mother to come in from the waiting room and he didn’t say that woman who had brought him was his mother-in-law, his own mama now gone home to heaven and Jesus and love.
At noon, my mama brings chicken soup to the sleeping house. I tell her we can’t thank her enough, for her night coming and night carrying and night Christ-likeness. And she reaches out and touches my cheek and she says it fervent.
“But he is my son. I love him.”
And when one dies, the love doesn’t, and love carries on in the heart of another and the love of the Son heals the sick of this world.
Mama, she drives home.
And I ladle out her soup.
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If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing….
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away…
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. ~ 1 Cor. 13
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are {Zondervan}
{New York Times Bestseller Award winner in: Christianity Today Books of the Year USAToday Bestseller}
"...[from] one of the most gifted writers I have ever read...a book that will challenge you and mess with you
in the most beautiful of ways..." Lysa Terkeurst, Proverbs 31 Ministries
