Retraining an old habit

On Sunday, our good friend Stephen Thrasher (comet smasher) was in town from Boston and came by for a visit. In the course of our very interesting conversation he mentioned that he had once memorized a few chapters of the Bible. To help him do it he wrote a program that would check what he typed from memory against the biblical text at Biblegateway.com. In this way he managed not only to memorize the words but even the correct punctuation as well.

Long ago I set out to memorize the book of James, but lost the habit along the way and never got past the first chapter. Well, Stephen sat down to the computer to see how much he could remember of his old memorization, and then challenged me to try and remember James. I didn't do all that well, but it sparked a little something in me, and I decided to go at it again. So, over the last couple of days I have rememorized James 1:1-12 (now in the NASB instead of the NIV as before), and I am finding it pretty easy and exciting too.

One of the great things about memorizing scripture is that you have to read and think about *every* word. A lot of times I'll read a passage and assume I know what it means, then never give it a deeper examination. But as I read more carefully, I see how much interpretation/meaning I have assumed and how much I really don't know or understand. Very exciting! Sometimes its like reading it all for the first time.

Of course, one of the tough things about this goal is that there seems to be so very many things all of a sudden that claim my time and thoughts. You might even call it opposition to my goal (I tend to think there is some after the nearly monumental effort it took to "find" the time and will to work on it today). But once the decision is made and the effort begun, it is so very rewarding.

Wanna try it? Stephen has so graciously permitted me to link to his program. Dive in here. Just select the book, chapter & verses, and version from the pull down menus then type away. When you click "check" it will display the correct text on top, with what you missed typed correctly in blue, then below it will display the text you typed with the errors & omissions in red. If you got it all correct, you will simply see the text with "Good Job" at the top of the page.
Happy memorizing!