Like Reading it Twice Only More So

Instead of a verse today, I thought I would give you a reason that you should read these and perhpas commit some of these poems to memory. Over at the Oxford Dictionary Blog, I read this interesting tidbit.

But more often, listening to a poem once is really not listening to it at all. It’s only on a second reading that it comes to life. This is true on the page too, and most of us do reread poems as a matter of course. The first time we’re getting the hang of it, finding our bearings. We’re so busy getting to the destination that we don’t have time to look out the window. Once we’re confident about the poem we can relax in that alert, whole-hearted way that only happens when we really engage with verse. And in fact that often requires reading the poem aloud to ourselves. Because most poems, as we know, are sound as well as sense; music as much as meaning. Which is why poetry readings – recitals, as they’re sometimes called — should be the ideal place to encounter poems.
Incidentally, there’s a great piece on OxfordWords by Andrew Motion about the Poetry By Heart project, which proves that the better we know a poem, the more it changes, becoming bigger and more precise. Learning poems is like reading twice only more so. In fact it’s reading squared.

Once upon a time, I thought that the goal was to read as much as possible. To read much and to read quickly to get to the next book, but not all books are made for that. Poetry is not written to be skimmed and it is necessary to read several times, pause, think, reflect over what was written.

Doesn't the same principle apply to Scripture?