NT 2020

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” President John F. Kennedy, “Moon Speech,” Rice Stadium, September 1962

As we come to the end of the first month of this decade, I have begun to ponder a question. We all make New Year’s resolutions (well, not everyone, but many do) . . . or maybe “goals” is a better word. I shared mine in a blog entry earlier this month. But have you ever made a New Decade’s resolution? Neither have I.

As I continued to ponder this question, I quickly thought of the above quote by JFK. It’s pretty motivational, isn’t it? The “Moon Speech” got me to thinking that if—and that’s a big if—I were to make a resolution, or goal, for this decade, it would have to be something pretty big. It would have to be challenging, and it would have to be significant. It would be difficult to attain, yet produce lifelong benefits. More “mundane” resolutions like losing twenty pounds or remembering to floss every day wouldn’t cut it.

Over the past few years, I have been increasingly exposed to the idea and practice of memorizing Scripture. In 2009, I took a series of classes where I had to commit a total of six biblical passages to memory, each of which was eight to eleven verses long. In addition, I have done some reading on the topic. In particular, I read recently of a pastor advising other pastors to memorize entire books of the Bible. Is he kidding? Entire books? No way! Yet this seemingly outlandish advice got me to dwell on the subject of Scripture memorization even more.

All this led me to consider the myriad of good reasons for committing Scripture to memory. I will not elaborate on all of them here, as I think many of them are self-evident. Eventually, though, I noticed that my ponderings about Scripture memory were beginning to merge with this idea of a New Decade resolution. Suffice it to say that this confluence of events and ideas has led me to my goal for the new decade. Are you ready? . . .

By the end of this decade, my goal is to memorize the entire New Testament. For short, I will call my goal “NT 2020.”

Yes. I said the entire New Testament. That’s twenty-seven books, from Matthew to Revelation. Two hundred and sixty chapters. Just under 8,000 verses. That’s an average of about 800 memory verses per year.

Now, before you laugh too hard, let me say a few things.

First, I have ten years to complete it. I don’t have to do it all at once. Remember, we didn’t put a man on the moon in 1962 or 1963. We did it in July of 1969.

Second, I have a small head start, in that there are a lot of verses that I have already memorized, or that I am pretty familiar with. This is a result of my seminary study, and five years as a Bible Drill leader at church.

Third, I have a plan. I won’t bore you with all of the details, but I am starting by memorizing “anchor verses” throughout the New Testament, to include the first verse of every chapter, as well as other familiar verses (i.e. John 3:16, Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:9). These verses will be the “frame” upon which the overall memorization can be “built.”

Fourth, think for a moment of the things that you have memorized and perhaps don’t realize it. For instance, in my case, I bet I could recite to you, from memory, right now, the lyrics from at least 500 rock and roll songs from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Heck, I know the lyrics to at least 150 Beatles songs right off the bat . . . “As I write this letter, send my love to you, remember that I’ll always, be in love with you . . .” (that’s from “P.S. I Love You,” it just came into my head). All I’m saying here is that the entire New Testament may seem like an insurmountable number of words to commit to memory, but in reality, I have probably memorized just as many words in another area of life without really thinking about it. When I view things from this angle, I am encouraged.

Fifth, what if I fail miserably and only get half way there? Well, in that case, I still will have memorized great stretches of the New Testament, which would still be extremely beneficial.

So, you are all cordially invited to my house on January 1, 2020 for “NT 2020,” where I will recite the New Testament for you. That is, until you cry, “Uncle.” Then we’ll just visit and eat a lot of good food together and have a good time. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’ll leave a tip jar at the door, but I have time yet to work out the details.

What do you think? Am I totally off my rocker? Do you think there is any chance that I could really do this? It seems really, really hard. But then again, as JFK said, sometimes we don’t do things because they are easy, but because they are hard, and in my case, I see that the benefits to my personal spiritual life and teaching ministry would be immense.

My New Year’s resolution

Parents and grandparents, be very careful what you say to your children and grandchildren. You never know what little tidbit is going to stick with them and have a big impact on their lives.

For about thirty years, before she passed away in 1989, my grandmother lived by herself—a widow—in a small house on the top of a large hill in the middle of nowhere in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. (The photo you see is Grandmom at my wedding in 1988.) She was a dedicated Christian woman, and a great cook. I have fond memories of spending Thanksgivings at her house with all of my cousins, playing on the hill and eating all of her apple, blackberry, cherry, and other pies. At other times she would spend all day making perogies—a Polish dish that was a family favorite.

On one visit to Grandmom’s house, when I was about twelve, I was snooping around in her living room, and I saw a big book opened up, written in some unrecognizable foreign language. Unbeknownst to me, she was watching me, and noticed my bewilderment at the book. She told me that it was her Slovak Bible. She was born to parents who had come to America from Eastern Europe, so she knew Slovak.

What she said next has stayed with me to this very day. She said that she had read through the Bible each year for thirty-seven years, and this year, for a change of pace, she was reading through the Bible in Slovak.

Now, as a pre-teen, and even in my teenage years, I did not give the comment too much thought. But in my twenties, I began to try to read the Bible all the way through. Every year I made a New Year’s resolution to read my entire Bible-In-A-Year. I think there was one year when I made it to the end of January before quitting. In other years, I don’t think I even made it to January 15th. With each year’s failure, I began to give more and more thought to Grandmom’s incredible testimony. How in the world did she do it? I couldn’t even make it through the Bible once, let alone thirty-seven times.

When I hit my mid-thirties, still failing every year, a significant thought dawned on me. I calculated that when Grandmom told me about her Bible reading, she was about seventy-four years old. “If that’s the case,” I thought, “then she didn’t even make it through the Bible for the first time until she was about thirty-seven!” There was still hope for me!

In 2004, I received one of the best presents I’ve ever gotten. For my birthday, my wife gave me “The Bible on CD.” I started listening to it while commuting to and from work. I figured that if I wasn’t going to read the Bible all the way through, I could at least listen to the whole thing.

Well, guess what? I listened through the entire Bible for four years in a row, 2005 to 2008. It’s not easy, because the Bible is a long book (64 long CDs in the version I own). And there are certainly stretches of the Bible that are difficult to get through. But I have come to two very important realizations. First, once I got through the Bible the first time, doing it again wasn’t nearly as hard. Second, the more I listen to the Bible, the more interesting it becomes. Even many of the “boring” stretches have become a lot more intriguing to me.

Now the bad news. In 2009 I didn’t make it. So, my New Year’s resolution in 2010 is to get back on the wagon and listen to the entire Bible once again. I am very excited about doing so.

Oh, and there’s one more thing. As a seminary student who feels God’s call to teach the Bible vocationally, I am learning Hebrew and Greek, the original languages in which the Bible was written. As such, I will be studying and reading the Bible in those languages for the rest of my life. My eventual goal is to get to a point where, instead of reading or listening to the Bible-in-a-year in English, that I will do so in Hebrew and Greek. Maybe I won’t be able to get there for another twenty years, but that’s my goal.

Impossible, you say? Well, I’ll tell you, sometimes when I feel a little overwhelmed with my biblical studies, or wonder if I will ever master Hebrew and Greek, I’ll think of Grandmom, sitting at the table all by herself up there on top of that hill in Pottstown, faithfully reading her Bible, year in and year out, in English and in Slovak. She probably didn’t think too much of it when she told me about her Bible reading and her Slovak Bible, but it has had in indelible effect on my life, and has been a huge encouragement to me in my journey of learning to be faithful to God’s Word.