Canter Bridge

Andrew Davis has written a splendid little manual to large-scale memorization of Scripture that is not for the faint of heart but will develop in the adventurous practitioner a strong heart.

Davis attends to both the why and the how of memorizing entire chapters and books of the Bible. He distinguishes between meditation and memorization, but finds it difficult to accomplish the former without investing in the latter. I think he’s right on this point, particularly as he notes an author’s logical flow that is perceptible and eventually absorb-able when the object of one’s memorization is a the wide Scriptural landscape rather than a short stopping-point here or there.

Davis’ method (the term seems preferable to ‘technique’) provides tracks for what will inevitably represent for the memorizer a long and even stubborn obedience in the same direction. He minces no words about the challenge of large-scale Scripture memorization, but encourages the readers that accomplishing this feat is more a matter of blood, sweat, and tears than of natural mental endowment.

I derive the title of this very brief review from one of Davis’ methodological steps. He calls it ‘weeding the garden’, which is the step he endorses that will allow the memorizer to return to what he or she has committed to memory and weed out the small errors (‘weeds’) that will creep in.

This book (99¢ in Amazon Kindle format as I write this review) meets a bona fide need, is clearly a labor of love, and will without doubt move would-be memorizers past the various early-stage obstacles in this journey and on to the place where many words of the Word have been securely placed in the storehouse of the heart.