Faith Works 3-13-2026
Jeff Gill
What we remember is what we live
___
Does your faith community have a living word at work in your midst?
"The living word" is what the Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig calls the communal text of what we have memorized. It may vary from congregation to congregation, but those shared corporate remembrances shape the life of the community.
Think of what you, and your fellow worshipers, have in your minds and hearts, whether there's a book nearby or not. John 3:16 will come up quickly for many; the Lord's Prayer is in multiple gospels (watch that ending, which is another subject), and there are actually two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament.
Some communities put more emphasis on learning by heart than others; a few of us have committed Romans 6 & 8 to memory, or at least the last half of Romans 8. Quite a few of us know I Corinthians 13 from start to finish. How about Psalms? The 23rd, the 121st, old 150? My wife and I have most of Proverbs, chapter 31 (at least from verse 10) ready to recite, a long story for another day.
Actually, you might be pleasantly surprised once you start in on piecing together what you do have. Maybe not word perfect, but close. I don't have as good a memory as I might wish, but Isaiah 40 for funerals, and 53 for Easter, along with the whole story of Joseph in Genesis 37 to 50 in parts, if not the whole, live with me.
And who of us doesn't have at least a steady echo in our heads with Linus speaking from Luke, chapter 2, along with goodly chunks of Matthew 2? Plus Luke 24: 13-35 a fair number of us could assemble, if piecemeal, as a coherent story we carry.
I mention all of this to speak a word for holding onto a print Bible in your spiritual disciplines. As many of us are reading scripture a bit more regularly in Lent, preparing for Holy Week at the end of the month, there's something to be said for the physicality of a book in one's hands.
Bible apps? Helpful! The Bible on my phone? Got it! Resources? So, so many: I have a rich collection of Greek and Hebrew helps, but I pull up an interlinear reading on my laptop or phone all the time to piece together an exegesis of a term in the week's reading. Yes, you can read Holy Writ on screens and devices.
Yet it is indisputably true: physical books provide cues which anchor memory. Reading on screens tends to default to more of a "scanning" mode, with less retention in your long-term memory. The National Institutes of Health call this the "screen inferiority effect." Reading from a text with weight in your hands, the feel of pages as you turn them, seeing the marks on the page you've made in the past, all of this builds connections within your memory-making capacity in ways a well-lit screen cannot.
A stack of leather-bound unread Bibles gathering dust versus a Bible app you actually read: there's no question I support using any technology to keep you immersed in a living, vital Bible practice.
What I want to encourage, though, is having a version or two around in print, between covers, which you pick up, underline in, and read through. Because I'm with Grundtvig: the Bible you remember is the scripture you live out. And that's when God's Word "is living and active and full of power." (Hebrews 4:12)
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a few Bibles at home, some of them in English. Tell him how you remember to read the Bible regularly at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
What we remember is what we live
___
Does your faith community have a living word at work in your midst?
"The living word" is what the Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig calls the communal text of what we have memorized. It may vary from congregation to congregation, but those shared corporate remembrances shape the life of the community.
Think of what you, and your fellow worshipers, have in your minds and hearts, whether there's a book nearby or not. John 3:16 will come up quickly for many; the Lord's Prayer is in multiple gospels (watch that ending, which is another subject), and there are actually two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament.
Some communities put more emphasis on learning by heart than others; a few of us have committed Romans 6 & 8 to memory, or at least the last half of Romans 8. Quite a few of us know I Corinthians 13 from start to finish. How about Psalms? The 23rd, the 121st, old 150? My wife and I have most of Proverbs, chapter 31 (at least from verse 10) ready to recite, a long story for another day.
Actually, you might be pleasantly surprised once you start in on piecing together what you do have. Maybe not word perfect, but close. I don't have as good a memory as I might wish, but Isaiah 40 for funerals, and 53 for Easter, along with the whole story of Joseph in Genesis 37 to 50 in parts, if not the whole, live with me.
And who of us doesn't have at least a steady echo in our heads with Linus speaking from Luke, chapter 2, along with goodly chunks of Matthew 2? Plus Luke 24: 13-35 a fair number of us could assemble, if piecemeal, as a coherent story we carry.
I mention all of this to speak a word for holding onto a print Bible in your spiritual disciplines. As many of us are reading scripture a bit more regularly in Lent, preparing for Holy Week at the end of the month, there's something to be said for the physicality of a book in one's hands.
Bible apps? Helpful! The Bible on my phone? Got it! Resources? So, so many: I have a rich collection of Greek and Hebrew helps, but I pull up an interlinear reading on my laptop or phone all the time to piece together an exegesis of a term in the week's reading. Yes, you can read Holy Writ on screens and devices.
Yet it is indisputably true: physical books provide cues which anchor memory. Reading on screens tends to default to more of a "scanning" mode, with less retention in your long-term memory. The National Institutes of Health call this the "screen inferiority effect." Reading from a text with weight in your hands, the feel of pages as you turn them, seeing the marks on the page you've made in the past, all of this builds connections within your memory-making capacity in ways a well-lit screen cannot.
A stack of leather-bound unread Bibles gathering dust versus a Bible app you actually read: there's no question I support using any technology to keep you immersed in a living, vital Bible practice.
What I want to encourage, though, is having a version or two around in print, between covers, which you pick up, underline in, and read through. Because I'm with Grundtvig: the Bible you remember is the scripture you live out. And that's when God's Word "is living and active and full of power." (Hebrews 4:12)
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a few Bibles at home, some of them in English. Tell him how you remember to read the Bible regularly at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.
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