Saturday, October 31, 2009

Out of sight, out of mind.

So when I was in school, I was really involved in Lads to Leaders. Especially Bible Bowl. For those of you don't know, L2L is a program for young kids in the church to learn how to become leaders in the church. They go to convention and compete (although some people don't like to call it a competition) in their various areas. There's song leading, speech, art, debate, puppet skits, and lots of others. Bible Bowl is taking whichever book is being studied that year, and studying it, being able to answer questions and such. Then at competition you and your team of 4 sit in a room and answer questions on the book for like, 4 hours, and whichever teams have the highest scores get awards. So I was always involved in Bible Bowl, and honestly, I was good at it. And it was awesome because for years afterwards, I could still remember the things I had studied. Over the years, I studied Genesis (for 2 years-they split it up), Matthew, John, Acts, James....I think that's it. I can't remember if there were any others off the top of my head. For James, I actually memorized the whole book. It's only like, 107 verses or something like that. And there's another event to participate in called Centurion of Scripture where you memorize 100 verses. So I kinda hit 2 birds with one stone on that one.

So the last couple of weeks I have gotten into the New Testament in my Reading-through-the-Bible plan. And I have realized how much I had forgotten from the Gospels. There are so many little stories that I used to know so well but just haven't thought about because I haven't read them in so long. It's kinda sad. Especially when it comes to passages like the Beatitudes. We hear individual verses or groups of verses referenced in sermons or classes, but rarely read through it all in one sitting. And there are so many little miracles or parables that just get a couple of verses so they just get skimmed over. So it has definitely been a good refresher. I've enjoyed it. I think I've mentioned what I want to do for my reading next year. I've heard that if you read 3 chapters from the NT every day, you'll read through it 4 times in a year. 3 chapters is so easy. So I'm excited about re-familiarizing myself with the NT and all of the stuff I used to know when I was younger.

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