What’s better than memorizing the Bible?  Considering how little of that I do, I guess my answer is “something.”  But I know it’s good for the mind and soul, so I have studied Ephesians.

I used this when I started the method. In the long run, however, 3x5 matzoh crackers were not practical.

I learned how to use a special summary of the passage as an aid for memorization.  It uses just the first letter of each word.  Just follow these two steps:

1. Learn the passage well enough to recite it with confidence using the summary.
2. Keep the summary handy and use it to recite the passage many, many times.

The fun part about this is you don’t do any “memorizing” exactly; at least not in the way I used to assume …

Tom bent all his energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter. At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson, but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through the fog…

– from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer

Here are links to 1-page PDFs that will get you started on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in the New Int’l Version.  They include the complete text, so you can use them without a Bible at hand.  Laminate and post in the shower stall, on your exercise bike, on the backside of your clipboard, or wherever.

• EphesiansText Chap_1
• EphesiansText Chap_2

More Tips:

1. Memorize in chunks.  This helps make the task manageable.  You’ll see each of the chapters I’ve provided is divided into four equal chunks.
2. For a lengthy passage, start at the end and memorize backwards by chunks.  If you want to memorize Ephesians 1 and 2, you’d start with the fourth chunk of chapter 2.  This is helpful because you generally are catching up with your completed work.  It’s like clearing mesquite brush with a machete, but walking backwards.  No?  All right, it’s like crossing the frozen Bering Strait in an ice-breaker, but moving in reverse.  Okay, since those metaphors aren’t helping you’ll have to take my word on this.
3. Stick to the translation that’s most familiar to you when memorizing.
4. Select a passage that’s of compelling interest for you.  Memorization is work, and it should be delightful.
5. Set a goal for retaining what you’ve learned.  I’m very cautious about making an unlimited promise.  But a worthy goal might be to make sure you can confidently recite the passage one year after fulfilling the original goal.