True story: Some years ago, when my sister was getting ready to go to college, my dad was reading through the available scholarships that the school (Philadelphia Biblical University) offered. He noticed, buried somewhere in the literature, one unique offer. There was a standing scholarship of $500 for any new student who could recite the letter to the Galatians by memory. My dad thought: “We can do this.” I’m not sure my sister immediately agreed when he announced his plan to her, but he had a solution. He would memorize it with her, by setting it to music and recording it for her to listen to. He got his cassette recorder (yes, tapes) and set about accomplishing his goal.
It worked. They both memorized the letter, and she saved $500 in college bills.
But it didn’t stop there. My dad had been bitten by the memorization bug. He realized how much benefit he was reaping from memorizing such large portions of scripture, and he kept going. Philippians, 1 John, Jude, and then on to a bunch of Psalms. He would start to get after me when I didn’t have basic, short verses memorized. Of course I had no excuse. It was inspiring, to say the least, and it began a stretch in my own life where I found out that I really could get large swaths of scripture memorized. I found the same benefits that my dad had found.
A little while ago I took one of the old cassettes he had made and got it digitized so I could send it to the whole family and put it on my iPod.
I figured I’d share some of them here, but I tried to upload the audio for you to download, and had some problems. So…Catch me at church if you’re interested in getting some Psalms or the book of Galatians and I can hook you up.