When I was in Sunday School, we had to memorize Bible verses. Once we recited the verse to our teacher, it disappeared from our memories. Gone forever. What none of us kids or our teachers seemed to realize is that all of us had learned some substantial chunks of scripture in a way that would remain with some of us for decades. Every Sunday we went to church where we sang the liturgy which was chock full of Bible passages. I can give you Psalm 51:10-13 with ease. It starts out: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit with me.”

I find that it is easier to memorize poetry than prose, and to memorize something sung than something merely spoken. Things that are sung stay with us. I have visited people in memory units who can no longer carry on a conversation, but can sing with confidence a song they learned many years before.

We often say that memorization is learning by heart, a way of internalizing something, of making it part of us. It is striking, then, that the Psalmist prays that God would create in him a clean heart. It’s not a superficial change, but one that goes to the core of existence. This is one of the themes of Lent. Transform me, God. Make a new person out of me.

Faith is a matter of the heart–not in the sense that it is something that we feel, but that it is something at our center which shapes and moves our lives.

Read Psalm 51 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne