When Life Gives You Lemons, Memorize Scripture

One of my classes this semester is called Personal Spiritual Disciplines. My professor, Dr. William Cutrer, is quite an entertaining guy and he's challenged us to memorize Scripture as one of the assignments. I haven't done much Scripture memorization since I was a kid but we are all commanded in Scripture to "let the word of Christ richly dwell within you" Colossians 3:16. A good way for the Word to dwell in us is to memorize it. In Biblical times, Jewish children would memorize whole books of the Torah, and many still do. It's amazing to me to understand that the Scripture quoted by Jesus when He was tempted by Satan was Scripture he learned as a young boy. There are many good reasons to memorize Scripture and I highly recommend it.

For the class assignment, we were given several passages from which we could choose. I've decided to memorize Psalm 19 because it's been one of my favorites for a while and I thought it would be nice to know it by heart. I say it's one of my favorites but actually the first verse is the main reason I like it. "The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands." How can you look at the sky on a clear night and not appreciate what a glorious God He is to have made such beauty? The first verse makes plenty of sense to me. It's a straightforward, declarative sentence and I understand it. The verses that follow are more poetic and it takes a literal-minded person like me a little while to "get" the symbolic nature of the language. In case you don't have your Bible handy, here are the first six verses of the text:

A Psalm of David
1 The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard.
4 Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their utterances to the end of the world
In them He has placed a tent for the sun,
5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber;
It rejoices as a strong man to run his course.
6 Its rising is from one end of the heavens,
And its circuit to the other end of them;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.
Psalm 19:1-6 (NASB)

The poetic language of verses 2-6 has confused me a little bit. There are some people who can read something like this and instantly know what the author means but I'm not that type of person. It takes me a little while to figure it out.

Today while I was at work at Chick-fil-A, I had the pleasure of "squeezing" lemons for our lemonade. It should probably be called juicing lemons because we use a juicer, but all the people who have worked there much longer than I, always call it squeezing, so we'll go with that. It takes a lot of lemons to make the lemonade y'all love so much. We go through about 800 - 1200 lemons a day depending on the amount of business we have, and we "squeeze" them one by one, by hand, with a juicer. It's a very monotonous job. Now you're wondering "Why in the world is Casey telling me all this about stupid lemons?" I know, I'll get on with it. Today while I was working on the lemons, I began to recite the portion of Psalm 19 I have memorized just to practice saying it and make sure I have it down pat. While I was going over it, I finally realized what the poetic language about "words" and "speech" and something about a "bridegroom," meant. Once I realized it, it made the passage even more alive and more glorious to me.

I realized that the verses following verse one were explaining how the heavens were indeed telling of His glory. I realized that it is saying that every day and every night, the heavens testify, not with words but with their beauty and majesty, to the intricacies with which God created the universe. The universe is bigger than our minds can fathom and the God who made them is even bigger. When I thought about verse 5, I had to smile. David is describing the sun as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. He's saying that the sun, in doing what God designed it to do, is bursting forth with gladness and declaring God's glory "and nothing is hidden from its heat." Now I'm not married yet but even I understand how a bridegroom, especially a new one, would burst forth from his chamber. He would be excited, happy, and full of joy!

It was so exciting to finally better understand what this passage meant. I was so excited that I finished squeezing lemons in no time. I don't think I've ever finished them that quickly. You never know when the Holy Spirit is going to make something known to you. You might be in the middle of doing something boring when He decides to reveal a little bit of His glory to you. May we, like the sun, gladly declare God's glory as His creation!

CRH

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit." Philippians 4:23