Close to Our Hearts

Shortly before His crucifixion, Jesus demonstrated to His disciples, using powerful symbolism that we continue to observe today, the meaning of what He was about to endure.  The Matthew 26 account says:
26And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body."27Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.28For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.29But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom."
The Luke account, in chapter 22, adds that Jesus said, in verse 19, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me."
In remembrance of Me - powerful words that can motivate us today.  We need to find ways to remember what God has said to us, so that our lives might be guided by His truth.  Committing Scripture to memory and then recalling verses or passages can be instrumental in the process of renewing our minds in Christ, in addition to studying and meditating on the Word of God.  It's vital to a vibrant Christian life to keep God's Word close to our hearts and at the forefront of our minds.

In Deuteronomy 11, Moses gave instructions for the people to keep the Scriptures close to them:
18"Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.19You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.20And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,21that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth.

A 1,500-year-old papyrus has been described in an article on the British Daily Mail website as "one of the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms."  The text, making reference to the Lord's Supper, was contained within an amulet.

Dr Roberta Mazza, a Research Fellow of the John Rylands Research Institute, came across the amulet while trawling through thousands of fragments of unpublished historical documents that are kept inside the library’s vaults.

She believes that the charm casts important new light on early Christianity - just 300 years after the Roman emperor Constantine converted to the religion.

She contends that it shows how Christians adopted the ancient Egyptian practice of wearing amulets to protect the wearer against dangers, a practice that was continued by the Christians who replaced the prayers to Egyptian and Greco-Roman gods with extracts from the Bible.

Here's the text, which Mazza describes as a combination of biblical passages including Psalm 78:23-24 and Matthew 26:28-30, among others:

'Fear you all who rule over the earth.

'Know you nations and peoples that Christ is our God.

'For he spoke and they came to being, he commanded and they were created; he put everything under our feet and delivered us from the wish of our enemies.

'Our God prepared a sacred table in the desert for the people and gave manna of the new covenant to eat, the Lord’s immortal body and the blood of Christ poured for us in remission of sins.'

Gene Veith, Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, writes on his blog at Patheos.com that

The article on the find says that this is an example of Christian “magic,” but the text says nothing about protection or anything spell-like. The ancient Hebrews of the Bible would also wear little cases that contained Bible verses (Deuteronomy 11:18). The ignorance of the news story in saying that this is one of the “first” references to the Last Supper–the early Church Fathers, such as Irenaeus who died in 202 A.D., referred to it all the time–casts further doubt on the “magic” claim. This instead sounds like an example of Christians following a cultural practice while giving it a new meaning. 

Whatever the back story on this intriguing amulet might be, there are several lessons that we can apply to our lives.  The Mail article surmised because of the faint writing on the back of the papyrus that this could be a receipt for the payment of a grain tax.   Whoever this amulet belonged to was committed to making a documentation or even a declaration of faith in God.  This papyrus was perhaps a way to keep God's Word close.  

And, how about us?   Do we want to keep God's Word close to our hearts?  And how are we doing that?   Perhaps there is an exercise that you can use in order to help facilitate the remembrance of Scriptures as you carry out your daily routines.  

As Veith points out, there was apparently an element of giving new meaning to a cultural practice here.  The Egyptians had their set of gods, and even the Daily Mail article points out that Christians replaced those references with Scripture.  We can evaluate if there are idols, false gods, that we have set up in our lives - not necessarily deities, but the practice of placing too high a value to something important to us, even to the extent of exalting it above God.   Our process of surrender to Christ involves replacing the things we worship with the worship of the Most High God.