A Time To Remember

June 19, 2001; April 4, 2002; September 3, 2003; August 4, 2004; June 3, 2005; and May 20, 2007. Six dates and to most of you nothing more than just that, six dates. But to at least one set of parents, two sets of grandparents, and several sets of great granparents, these dates are very important. Each of these represents the day our lives were blessed with a new child, grandchild or great grandchild. Those days were days of life-changing blessings and we will not forget. Lots of days and things are easy to forget but because these little lives are important to us, and effect us on a daily basis, we do not forget.
In my daily Bible reading, I have been reading the Minor Prophets. Whenever I find myself in these books, I think about the range of emotions the chosen people have to go through. At first they are consumed with sin, so much so, that they have pushed Yahweh right out of their hearts. Even while enjoying the fruit of His blessings, they have forgotten that He is the source. God sends His prophets in an attempt to remind them. I am sure the prophets were frustrated as we can almost imagine the blank looks on the faces of the people, "who us?" "the blessings God gave us?" "we are not doing what?". Then to see that look turn into recognition and then to follow in their father Adam's steps and begin blaming, "Well, the king . . . " or "you can't really blame us when the priests . . . " and even everyone's favorite, "Everybody else is . . . " And once again they would not repent and God would cause them to be taken into captivity, taken away from the land they were not grateful for, taken away from the temple where they had been too busy to worship, taken away from their families and cities where they were abusing and defrauding one another. They would be held there, in a foreign land, reminiscing about the good old days and remembering what it was like when God was blessing them. The remembering would lead to repentance and ultimately to rescue. But they would repeat this cycle over and over, not remembering what happened last time, not remembering God's promise to do it again.
If you are like me, you have a difficult time understanding how they could continually repeat this cycle. It is easy for us to look back at their history and wonder how they could fail to learn in spite of lesson after lesson after lesson. Imagine if our Christian walk was being chronicled step by step, written down in a book for future generations. In four hundred years, would Christians be looking back on my life and saying, "why could she not learn?" "Couldn't she remember what God promised? How could she forget where her blessings came from?" "Couldn't she remember her covenant with God for longer than just a minute?" How easily we forget! Without a conscious effort to remember, we fall, we stumble, we forget and we sin. We need to be a remembering people. We need to be the kind of Christians who have not "forgotten our first love", who "remember from where we have fallen", who remember Him and His sacrifice every hour, every day, every minute, not just during communion. We remember that which is important to us and when we place God and His things at the top of our lists, remembering is easier. We are a forgetting people by nature, but the old nature has been put to death and the new one---well this new one has a memory, enhanced by the blood of the Lamb. This new man, he knows that now is the time to remember.
Peace
Neva