Learning

For the past couple of weeks, I've been focused on The Lord's Table Bible study, unaware of what's going on in the world around me.  Not that it's a bad thing.  The world doesn't care what I think.  I love to learn and I am learning at lot from the study.  I'm especially learning how little I know, in spite of having learned a lot.

If I could explain:  There's 2 types of knowledge-head and heart.  In another description, there's memorization and learning.  If I memorize something, I'll forget it unless it really gets into my heart and spirit.  The only way that happens is to put the knowledge to use.  For example, when we learn our times tables in grade school, we memorize over and over until it comes automatically.  That, by the way, is my biggest beef about America's public schools.  Children do NOT pick up the basics as they go along.  Higher math cannot be done without the foundation of the basics.  Period.  But, I digress.  Not only is rote memory of the basics essential, we have to continue to use what we've learned for the rest of our lives.  Maybe that's why people can't do higher math after school.  We don't retain because we don't use.  

Today, athletes speak of "muscle memory."  They practice until it's burned into them and comes automatically.  I remember reading Terry Bradshaw's first book, how he practiced throwing in the back yard through a tire hanging from a tree limb.  When it came time for him to apply what he'd learned, it stood him in very good stead.

Yesterday, I said I know it all.  Not a bit sanctimonious, am I?  By that, I meant I've been attending Bible teaching churches since I was two years old, been teaching classes since I was twelve years old, memorized thousands of Bible verses in my lifetime, and am a high honors graduate of Moody Bible Institute.  That's almost 70 years of learning, but, unfortunately,  I haven't applied it consistently. It hasn't gone from my head to my heart.

How does that happen?  I've bumbled and stumbled through life, learning, learning, learning, but not applying consistently.   The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune would get in the way, choking me.  Matthew 4 tells parable about the seeds and the sower.  Verse 18 says, "Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful."  

Not all of those things are bad.  Sometimes the good gets in the way of the best.  The Lord's Table says it will teach me how to appropriate that Living Water and Bread of Life that will keep me from hungering and thirsting for things that don't satisfy.  I'm more than ready to learn that.