I attended our annual AWANA awards banquet last Sunday. Many young people were recognized, but one young girl in particular stood out to me. In case you’re unfamiliar with AWANA, it’s a fun program for youth offered in many churches and has a heavy emphasis on Bible memorization. But back to our young heroine, Emily. Over the course of this past year Emily has completed several AWANA books which represent a significant amount of Bible study and scripture memorization.
As the emcee shared these facts before presenting her award, he went on to add Emily had also decided to complete an extra assignment… memorizing the entire Sermon on the Mount, which she did!
I sat up when I heard that. Memorizing The Sermon on the Mount is no small task: It’s 3 chapters long and includes 111 verses. What’s worse, I’ve personally started memorizing that portion of Scripture more than once and never progressed further than the beatitudes, the first section. Embarrassing.
Reminiscing back to my short stint in AWANA as a 7 year old, I don’t recall ever volunteering for extra assignments. Or hardly even doing the minimum for that matter, usually I was the one cramming right before it started. In fact, the main experience echoing through the halls of my memory is the excitement of playing bombardment during “game time.” Nowadays, I’m not sure if they even let kids play bombardment for safety reasons.
But I digress – What I meant to say by all this was, “I was inspired!” If she can do it, maybe I could too.