As I’ve been sorting though various sins and situations in my life, I’ve come to a renewed conviction about the vast importance of memorizing Scripture. It’s something that I’ve done purposefully and aggressively in the past, but something that I’ve increasingly neglected over the past decade. I’ve fallen into the warning of James 1:22:
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”
Sadly, I’ve become a Sesame Street character with regards to Scripture.
Being a seminary-trained fellow that is very acquainted with the contents of the Bible, it’s an easy (and terribly wrong) leap from being familiar with Scripture to telling yourself that familiarity is the same as purposefully obeying Scripture. Over many years, I was one of those guys who could kinda finish a Scripture quote (get the gist, but not the specific words) and remember the book and chapter (but not the verse). That vague knowledge of Scripture wasn’t the same as having specific truths penetrate and permeate my heart and thinking to the point that they were regularly part of my thinking and decision making processes.
In order to both rectify that self-deceiving situation, I’ve been working on something.
I’ve made memory cards in order to memorize key passages in Proverbs with my kids.
Now I know I’m possibly re-inventing the wheel (there are already books out there that have organized all the Proverbs by topic), but I’ve got a 5 & 6-year old and I wanted to tailor some memory cards that are more oriented towards them (though there’s plenty of Proverbs that will require some explanation of the principle to be translated to little minds). This means I’ve stayed away from the warnings against adultery and adulteresses, mostly because I don’t want to have that conversation yet, and I’ve picked passages that are (mostly) single verses related to topics relevant to them (i.e. nothing about borrowing money and charging interest on loans).
This isn’t a catch all for memory cards, but it’s definitely a few dozen hours of work that is a big step in the right direction.
I’ve also formatted the cards to be printed on 3 x 5 cards on an Avery 5388 template, which is here (and blank Avery 5388 pages for printing are here). I’m going to laminate the cards (craft project with the kids for next weekend) and hole punch the corners so that I can organize the cards (possibly by topic) on 2-inch loose leaf rings. For anyone who hasn’t seen Scripture Memory Cards on loose leaf rings, they look like this:
Here’s my memory cards in 2 formats, depending on what format you want:
- Proverbs Memory Cards For Kids – Final -Word Document
- Proverbs Memory Cards For Kids – Final – PDF Document
Be warned: it’s a 59 page document with 3 Proverbs per page. That’s 177 cards of Scripture (an Avery 5388 pack has 150 cards on 50 sheets). They’re also spaced so that you can duplex them easily, just to keep you from not having to buy 2 packs of Avery 5388 cards (but that also means much more work in order to organize them topically).
I hope they are a blessing to someone.
Until Next Time,
Lyndon “Forgetful Jones” Unger