Do any of you have a memory where you will recall lyrics or other once-memorized bits at the strangest times? I was at the acupuncturist Thursday night lying on my back with 20 or so needles in my back and the verse about the word of God being sharper than any two edged sword came to my mind. I could picture it, and could say nearly the entire verse but I couldn’t recall exactly where it was located.
I had a student say something and I started singing a song to them with words similar to what they had said, but I couldn’t quite remember all the words to the song.
I had a story and a memory come tumbling back to me, in an English department meeting of all places when Milo started talking about imaginative sympathy. When we read, we are changed. There is neuroscience to back this up. We can empathize with the characters and that’s how we connect with literature in a powerful and often, positive way. My mother used to tell this story about the first book I ever ‘felt’ instead of read, as a kindergartener in the back of the car traveling to North Bend.
I had a picture of how my life would go, and I assumed I could memorise some of the words but I couldn’t… there’s no way to remember how the rest of it will go.
I had an expectation that I was meant to live up to, but they got lost along the way…. misplaced like what I do with my work ID or my favourite pair of earrings or my passport before I need to travel. Sometimes the misplaced items or lyrics or verses come back to me. Sometimes I find them because I am looking for them. Sometimes I find them because I forget about it for a while and I stumble back across it. Sometimes they don’t come back.
…. and then, what do you do?
As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. Philippians 1:20
everything glorious 