"Bee" Doers of the Word?

Daniel Chew, 9, won the finals for his age group at the National Bible Bee Championships this week in Orlando, Fla.

Your word is a lamp to my feet
    and a light to my path.

Psalm 119:105 NRSVue

Bee doers of the word, and not hearers only...

James 1:21

I will never cease to be amazed by the children who participate in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee in the United States. How do these kids do it? How can they possibly cram so many words I've never heard before into their young brains? 

Now the New York Times tells me that there is another "bee", a bible verse memorization event Ivolving hundreds of children called The National Bible Bee: 

The Bee has achieved a quiet kind of celebrity status in some Christian circles, and video clips of its young competitors sometimes circulate beyond those communities on social media. The competition demands astonishing feats of memorization that make the televised National Spelling Bee look like a game of tic-tac-toe. Competitors at Daniel’s level memorized more than 570 verses, which they were expected to be able to recite on command.

At the senior level, ages 15 to 18, participants memorize 938 Bible verses, adding up to more than 20,000 words. In some rounds of competition, making even a single error in a long passage — an errant plural or wrong verb tense — leads to elimination.

I don't know whether to be impressed or unsettled -- perhaps both. It sounds a bit like indoctrination yet why is it okay to learn random, esoteric words but not scripture. I went to Vacation Bible School in an era when the memorization of daily theme verses was rewarded at the end of the week and no one thought anything of it. Sure, it was competitive and rote but I don't think we suffered lasting damage. I've never been good at memorizing scripture, word for word, but I'm glad that I have the gist of lots of passages. One of the few verses I can recall is the one from James, above, slightly modified. 

Jesus quoted scripture to Satan during his forty days in the wilderness and again while dying on the cross. These would have been verses he memorized in a semi-literate society. If we have any doubts about the power of "learning by heart" take a look at Taylor Swift concert footage and see the adoring fans singing every word of her songs as a vast choir. Our eleven-year-old grandson has an astonishing repertoire of NHL hockey facts going back decades tucked into his agile brain. Are we hard-wired to do this, particularly when we're young? 

Is it too late to start memorizing scripture? Maybe for this old dog, but the Bible Bee is fascinating.