Thought for Today
Deuteronomy 4:31 Because the LORD your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.
Job 8:13 Such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish. 14 Their confidence is gossamer, a spider's house their trust.
James 1:23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; 24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.
Today I am thinking about forgetting. Not because I forgot to write anything this morning. I merely had several things arise which demanded immediate attention. Rather, recently in devotionals and in worship, I have recently read and pondered on memory and remembering. The ‘flip-side’ of all of that is forgetting.
Many of us, as we attain being ‘of an age,’ find memory and forgetfulness of much more concern. Sometimes, we face that truth due to our own immediate circumstances; sometimes as we watch our friends and associates deal with ‘memory issues.’
I sometimes joke that were it not for Post-it® notes, I would never be able to get through the day. In fact, there are several stacks of them on my computer desk of various sizes and shapes. Interestingly, the story of their discovery that I have always heard has a connection to worship and choir music.
Even as young children, many of us learned the value of songs and rhymes as memory aids. I am sure I am not the only one who remembers, “In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” I learned the months by “Thirty days hath September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31 except February.”
When I studied New Testament Greek in seminary, I learned the value of mnemonics. In learning the declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs, I could recognize the noun or verb ending by a sing-song recitation of the normal endings. In English grammar, many of us learned “i before e except after c.”
Now that I am ‘of an age,’ I prefer to ignore forgetfulness and merely remind myself that the ‘hard drive’ of my mind is approaching the limits of its available storage capacity. Just as my ageing computer takes longer and longer to ‘boot-up’ each morning and longer to search for information, so to does my mind. I don’t really ever forget, I just take longer to remember, longer to retrieve information from storage.
Last month and last week, I wrote about “the immutability of God, “God’s freedom from all change, understood to emphasize God’s changeless perfection and divine constancy.” (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, pg. 115-116) The verse above from Deuteronomy is a reminder that our Creator God does not forget. That is one aspect of God’s nature and of God’s immutability. When God makes a promise, God never forgets the promise and God delivers what God has promised. Not only did God promise never again to destroy the whole world, God gave us a sign of that promise, “Genesis 9:14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”
The greatest example of God’s never forgetting a promise is the Incarnation, the gift of Jesus, the Son of God. Remember John 3:16-17. God never forgets.
The greater issue of concern is our forgetting. Not our forgetting of the everyday things of life: where we put the car keys; where we put our glasses; what that person’s name is. The deadly forgetting is forgetting the God who made us. Can we fall into the trap of forgetting God? Read the Bible. Look at the world around us. The overflowing parking lots on Sunday mornings are not at churches. Soccer fields have parking problems. Sports arenas have parking problems.
It’s not just the absence of worshippers, look at the way we treat each other. Look at the verse above from the Epistle of James. How many hear the word of God and fail to respond to God’s word in living their (our?) daily lives?
Be hearers of God’s word and doers. Live lives of faith and love. Remember, James also reminds us, “2:17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
Keep your faith alive, remember to love God and each other, trust God,
Pastor Ray