Committed to memory
I can still picture standing at the front of the class, taking a deep breath, and slightly mumbling these words: “Four score and seven years ago…”
Each week, with the arrival of a new history theme or English topic, my fifth-grade teacher required a handful of us in the class to memorize something connected to that subject.
Sometimes it was a poem. Other times it was a historical document or lines from a play. But every Friday morning, a certain few kids in the class would be called up front and asked to recite the assigned passage we’d been working on all week.
I’m sure there were other things I memorized that year. I know there was a poem. I think at one point I recited a brief biography on U.S. President Warren G. Harding (I thought he had a pretty great first name). But I remember most clearly, now some three decades later, those 272 words of the Gettysburg Address. Honestly, I remember most of all the relief I felt as I got to those final words, “…that a government of the people, by the people, for the people… shall not perish from the earth.”
I can’t say for certain why Mr. Moncrief decided memorization was such an effective or important strategy in our learning that year. I’ll admit, I may have cursed him a bit under my breath while I kept tripping up after the words, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war…” But the truth is, his pedagogy was somewhat effective. From time to time when I listen to the news today, I recall the wise words of President Lincoln and wonder what he might say about our political divisiveness and in-fighting today.
What I know for sure is this: we’ve all memorized something throughout our lives. We commit phone numbers or song lyrics to memory. My sister can still recite verbatim an entire 2-minute infomercial, after we saw it dozens of times one Christmas break, watching endless hours of TV during a blizzard. Maybe you can rattle off the words to your school fight song or your junior high locker combination. I hope there might even be a nod to your faith tucked into the recesses of your brain somewhere.
I always find it moving when those with memory loss may not remember what they had for breakfast, but can recite the 23rd Psalm or the Lord’s Prayer. Or when we’re feeling particularly discouraged, we somehow recall the faint memory of a word of hope from scripture.
It reminds me of the prophet Jeremiah’s words, where God promises, “I will put my laws within the people, I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” What we allow to be written on our hearts — or etched into our brains — is ultimately what guides us when we need it most. Aside from your childhood address or random trivia, what do you have memorized?
Here’s two possibilities worth committing to memory:
“Do not fear, for I am with you.” Isaiah 41:10
“We love because God first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
