Hide It In Your Heart

            When I was a child, going to Sunday morning services at our little Reformed Episcopalian church was, well... it was church.  It felt like church, it looked and sounded like church.  And believe it or not, I loved it.  As a little girl dressed in Sunday best and wearing little white gloves, we would all stand to sing the hymns, and kneel when we said communal prayers.  I had my own prayer book - the Book of Common Prayer, it was - and even as a child I enjoyed reading most of the psalms, but with some of the Puritan prayers, I would wince when I read, "Wherefore, fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of Thy servants as may be most expedient for them."  I was a dutiful child, and so I obediently memorized the liturgy even though the words sounded very much like the King James.

            Back then I did not realize the value of memorizing prayers for catechism class.  I didn't appreciate the treasure of psalms and Bible verses from that Book of Common Prayer that I was storing up.  And even if I had been told that "God's Word never returns void," I wouldn't have been able to tell you exactly what that meant.  But like I said, I was dutiful and so I memorized everything they put in front of me.  I even memorized that beautiful familiar verse from Psalm 119, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you."  

            Years later, that simple Bible verse and so many others - including many Puritan prayers and psalms I had memorized in the Book of Common Prayer - those riches I had hidden away in my heart as a child, I tell you what, they really paid an enormous dividend.  Because I sure did need those precious biblical reminders when I became a teenager and broke my neck in that diving accident.  It was then, during dark lonely nights in the hospital, that chunks and pieces of long-ago psalms and prayers floated to the surface of my memory.  And in the night, in those long, lonely hours, I would comfort myself, I would just sooth my soul with all the warm and familiar words I so often repeated as a little girl.  In fact, I could almost see page fourteen of the Book of Common Prayer and the words, though old and dusty, glowed with a timeless truth as I repeated them in a whisper:

            Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we, Thine unworthy servants, do give Thee most humble and hearty thanks for all Thy goodness and loving kindness to us, and to all men.  We bless Thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for Thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.  And, we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful.

            And that's just what I needed to remember in that hospital - I needed to know that prayer was a means of grace, that Christ was my hope of glory, and that I really could be unfeignedly thankful.  Yes, especially thankful that I had hid God's Word in my heart as a child. That's something to remember today, even if you are not a little girl.

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