Introduction
As a young mom, I went through a season when my son Ben needed hours—literally hours—to fall asleep. He was a preschooler, and we simply couldn’t keep him in bed long enough for his little body to settle and fall asleep. Night after night I sat outside his door in the hallway, waiting for the sound of tiny footsteps so I could gently redirect him back to bed. It felt like a Sisyphean task… three or four hours of doing almost nothing, but having to be constantly vigilant.
I tried reading, but the constant interruptions made that impossible. I tried watching a show on my iPad, something familiar that I wouldn’t mind pausing. I discovered that the stop-and-start rhythm frayed my nerves, so that wasn’t a helpful way to pass the time either.
Around that time, I stumbled on a Colossians memorization plan from Ann Voskamp. In Ann’s introduction, she quotes Dennis Lennon: “What a heart knows by heart is what a heart really knows.” She goes on to say “what the heart knows by heart is what can calm the heart. Direct the heart. Strengthen the heart. It made me ask: What do our hearts really know? And will we, as people of the Word, commit to shaping our lives by His letters?”
Sounded good enough for me. Two verses a week for a year? That actually sounds doable. Then one night, I carried Colossians upstairs as my hallway companion because I was already falling behind on the first two weeks of the memorization plan.
Something unexpected happened. Memorizing Colossians wasn’t disrupted by interruptions – it absorbed them. The repetition became a rhythm of grace. Those verses began to quiet my irritation and calm my soul. Night after night, Christ’s supremacy, Christ’s nearness, Christ’s sufficiency seeped into my being. I found myself looking forward to bedtime because I knew I’d have time with Colossians.
And I discovered something: when we return to the same Scripture again and again, Christ keeps revealing Himself. The words stay the same, but we are being changed. Night after night, that hallway became my holy ground.
Katie Rogers
Text:
Lord’s Prayer
Christ, who taught us to pray saying:
Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory forever. Amen.
