Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-214 Sunday 29 Oct 2000

Reading: PSALM 34 – LEARNING BY HEART

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

What appalling manners to keep God’s word waiting in the hallway of our minds: ‘Lord, I *will* receive your words into my heart.’

This ‘teaching’ Psalm was arranged for memorising. Here we find wisdom distilled from experience, lovely insights full of vigour and meditative playfulness, each verse in the original beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is a ploy ‘to exploit the brain’s natural tactics for remembering’ (Ted Hughes in ‘Memorising Poems’).

In Hebrew understanding the remembered word is held heart-deep where it converts into present action (therefore ‘bind them on your forehead’ Deut 6:4-9; Heb 8:10-12). Thus, ‘I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you’ (Ps 119:11).

The comment on Psalm 31 referred to this sanctifying process as ‘God’s violence from within’ deep in the subsoil of the interior life. We are not implying an automatic or magical operation of the word. Jesus said,’If you love me you will obey what I command’ (John 14:15,21-24). Love desires to hold Christ’s words deep in the memory where insight will lead to an abiding consciousness of the Lord in his word. It is like carrying an image of a loved one in your memory, in your mind as a living presence.

Scripture in the heart brings change. It alters the inner weather of our psychological world so that the planting of the Spirit may flourish, reshaping the landscape of the mind (Gal 6:22). It acts like a pacemaker at the centre of our interior life, setting up its healing and vitalising rhythms throughout our thought world. Thus our meditation and prayer will not simply float dreamily away but be rooted in, nourished by, the remembered Word. And the Lord appears in the inner room of the mind.

Take a verse which has spoken to you today and memorise it. Try to keep it active in your mind for the week, observing how it grows, shines, yields fresh insights.

– Dennis Lennon

Copyright Scripture Union, 2000

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