Be Still And Know

Proverbs 3:1-2 My child, never forget the things I have taught you. Store my commands in your heart. If you do this, you will live many years, and your life will be satisfying. What’s your memory like? Time and again, I trudge upstairs to get something and haven’t a clue what I’m looking for by the time I get there! Pathetically, I try to find something else useful to do while I’m there to justify the journey. Forgetting things is part of the human condition and always has been, and the writer of Proverbs often addresses the issue. He urges us not to forget what we’ve been taught, whether it was by our parents or our spiritual teachers. This involves planning. We need to pepper our lives with reminders of essential truths. We need to evolve a rhythm to our lives so that we are repeatedly reminded of what matters most. From earliest times, Jews had a variety of articles which gave them a constant reminder of the law. Phylacteries are small leather boxes which contain the Hebrew texts on vellum and are wor