Learning by W
hen I was in confirmation instruction, my pastor repeatedly told us about an American POW in Korea.This poor fellow’s only Bible and source of comfort in his captivity were the passages he had memorized as a confirmation student.
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I don’t doubt the story, corny though it might sound. Our Lord provides.That poor fellow had much to be thankful for in a thorough instruction. But that extreme, and somewhat unlikely, scenario hardly seemed justification to me at the time for all that memory work. I always thought that if I found myself in such dire straits I would simply ask the Red Cross for a Bible, and in the meantime, I could use the time saved on memory work to build a bomb shelter or otherwise prepare for crazy possibilities. For me, shallow as I was, it came down to this: Why should I memorize something I can just look up? Now I am a pastor. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t listen to children recite their memory work. Children are much nicer and better behaved now then when I was a boy. They hardly ever complain or argue about it. But when they do (because there is always someone who does, isn’t there?), I tell them that I don’t want them to memorize. I want them to learn by heart. You could, I note, look up your phone number in the phone book. It is there in the public record. It is probably on the Internet as well.You could even write it down and carry it in your wallet. But that doesn’t seem convenient for a number so important. I think the Bible passages and the Catechism are more important than that. I want people to have them on the tips of their tongues. But there is more to it than that.There is more than the possibility of Siberian prison camps without Bibles or the convenience of a quick reference.The main reason I want people
