The Old Man and the Axe

A new method of scripture memory

How do you memorize Scripture easily and efficiently?

I know the secret.

To show you, I’ve got to start with a parable.

There once were two lumberjacks—a young and an old. The young was fresh and new, stronger than the rest, and he could work for hours without a break; the old was a broken down husk, on the back end of his strength, and he struggled to move like the rest. But regardless, the respect the men of the camp had for the old man knew no bounds.

This angered the young man.

“Why do y’all kiss that old man’s feet?” he asked. “He ain’t nothing. Might have been once, but he ain't nothing now.”

The men of the camp stood silent, not wanting the rouse his temper and risk a brawl.

“Pfft… he ain't nothing!” he said, spitting to his side. He stomped across the clearing, over to where the old man sat. “You ain't nothing,” he said, spitting again. “Go home, old man.”

The old man looked up, slow and stern, and the two met eyes.

“Tell you what, youngin’,” said the old man, his eyes boring up and into the young man’s eyes. “You chop more wood than me on ‘morrow’s shift and I'll get on and get. But I best you and you get on.”

An evil grin erupted on the young man’s face. “You hear that!” he yelled over his shoulder. “This old sack thinks he can best me.” The young man put his hand out. “Shake.”

The old man rose to his feet, tall, and their eyes stood even. His hard hand crunched like grinding stone as it swallowed the young man's grip.

Early in the morning the whole camp rose and energy buzzed in the air. Bets were being made. To keep the suspense up between the two, the camp agreed that the old man would work on one side and the young man on the other. Neither could see from where they worked how much the other had cut.

Crooked-eye-Earnie stood up on a stump. “Rules are clear,” he yelled out over the camp. “These two’ll work out on either side. No crossing sides; nobody tellin’ how much is on each side. I’ll whistle to start and whistle to end, on account I got the loudest whistle in the camp,” he said with a thumb pointed to his chest and a smug look of pleasure across his face. Earnie was always proud of his whistle.

“You ready?” he said to the young man.

“Ha!” he laughed. “Am I ready? Question’s if this old man’s ready to meet his maker on account of him dying from a full days work.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Earnie, his eye going especially crooked with annoyance.

“You ready?” he said to the old man.

The old man gave one firm nod and worked his hand around his axe.

Earnie put his hand to his mouth and let out a scream of a whistle.

The young man ran off and started whacking and thudding into every tree that was in swinging distance. He fell them faster and faster—faster than he ever had. Ain’t no way this old man’s gonna beat me. He looked back over his shoulder, hoping to see a glimpse, and to his surprise he could see the back of the old man sitting on the very stump Earnie had let loose that screaming whistle. My God, the old man’s already taking a break. Ain’t been more than ten minutes and he’s taking a break.

Over the course of the day the young man would look over his shoulder and, more often than not, he’d see the old man sitting on the stump, back to him, Earnie making sure he didn’t look at the young man’s pile. The young man took no breaks, whipping his axe around like a mad man, and at the end, when that blessed whistle came screaming over the ridge, he’d had around him more wood than he’d ever dreamed he could cut in one day. He stomped over to the old man’s side.

“I told you, I told you old—” he said, but his body locked up and his jaw fell. Around the old man was more wood than he’d ever thought one man could fell, cut, and stack. It was nearly twice as much as his own. The old man looked at him firm.

“You best be gettin’ on now, youngin’,” he said, axe slinged over his shoulder.

“Ah hell,” said the young man, blood boiling up into his face. “Who helped him?” he said, pointing to the others. “I know it wasn’t him. He was takin’ more breaks than I’d ever seen in my life.”

The old man let out a deep laugh along with the rest of the men of the camp. “You think I was taking a break?” said the old man. “I wasn’t restin’, youngin’, I was sharpenin’ my axe.

The lesson is that sometimes we’ve got to sharpen our axe. We’ve got to do the work before the work; we’ve got to do the work that doesn’t look like work. When we do the work before the work it opens up efficiencies we didn’t know could exist and allows for us to do things much faster than others and with better results.

This is the first idea that needs to be held when describing how I have been learning scripture memory. We need to ask ourselves first questions first.

And the first question is what do we mean by scripture memory?

I’ll get to that next post.