I thought Bible memorisation was unnecessary. Then I needed it

We’d covered everything.  

Money, work, the kids, his head. Every front in his life had been named out loud, prayed over, laid hands on. By the time it got to me there was nothing left to say. I’d run out of prayers before I’d had a turn. 

So I offered a verse instead. 

All I had

I only had two to choose from. I’d started memorising Bible verses a few months earlier. I was a bit bored with the Bible so thought I’d try it. I wasn’t expecting much. I didn’t even have a method. I’d hear a verse that caught me, and I’d just keep saying it to myself. On the walk, in the shower, half asleep. It felt a bit mad, mouthing scripture to no one in a queue. 

Two verses in, I still felt mad. 

So when it was my turn and I had nothing else, I gave him one of them. Quietly. The kind that’s really an apology for not having more. 

He didn’t say anything. We finished praying, packed up, the room emptied out the way rooms do after something heavy. And then, right at the end, as we were leaving, he grabbed my arm. Asked if he could have the reference. Said it was exactly what he needed right now. 

I went home and thought about that for a long time, because it didn’t make sense to me. Everyone else had said something specific to his actual situation. I’d said two lines from a psalm with no obvious connection to mortgages or sleepless nights or whatever was going on for him at 2am. And it was the thing that connected. 

Here’s what I think happened. Everyone else had said something about his life. I’d given him something to take back into it. The verse wasn’t a comment on his situation. It was a gift to help him think his way through it. He didn’t need another opinion on his life. He needed something to hold onto that wasn’t an opinion at all. 

When I had nothing left to say, the only thing I had left to give wasn’t something I’d thought of. It was something I’d already put there.

I’d assumed Bible memorisation was a discipline we’d sensibly retired around the time we got the whole thing on our phones. Access felt like the upgrade. But access and possession aren’t the same thing. I’d been confusing them. A recipe saved to your phone doesn’t feed anyone. The words have to get further in than that. 

The word within reach

That’s the bit I hadn’t worked out. You can’t hear a word you haven’t got. Some say God tells them to look up a reference they don’t know. That’s never been my experience. But having the words already in me gives God something to work with. They’re there before the moment arrives that calls for them. I didn’t have a verse for every situation. I had two. But I had them without having to find them. 

I notice they work on me in two ways, though that makes it sound more organised than it is. Sometimes I’ll bring a verse to mind deliberately — let it open into something. And find I’m praying before I realised I’d started. The verse does the work of getting me there. Other times they arrive on their own, at odd moments — a decision I’ve been putting off, an afternoon that’s gone flat — and the verse is just there, already saying the thing I needed to hear before I knew I needed to hear it. 

I’ve added more since then. Cards in a box, the way people used to learn vocabulary. Some have been in there long enough they surface on their own. In queues, in arguments, in the gap before I fall asleep. I forget some. Get references wrong. Lose the second half of a sentence I was sure I had. 

None of that seems to matter as much as I thought it would. The point was never to be a walking concordance. It was to have something in me solid enough to give away when I had nothing else to offer. I didn’t pray for him out of what I knew about his situation. I prayed for him out of what I’d put in myself, months before either of us knew he’d need it. 

I still think it’s a strange discipline to recommend.  

It’s slow, it’s a bit embarrassing, and it produces nothing you can point to until, without warning, it does. I can’t promise you it’ll be the thing someone needs at the worst point of their year. I just know that when I had nothing left to say, the only thing I had left to give wasn’t something I’d thought of.  

It was something I’d already put there.