Remember, Oh Forgetting Heart
March 6, 2024 | By Annina Bradley Cornell ‘26
image description: book pages folded to create a heart in grayscale
I forget. I use three separate apps just to remember my daily responsibilities: Google Calendar for important events, Notion for to-do lists, Notes for random thoughts. I need highlighters, flashcards, and bookmarks to retain new information, and without a sticky note for a last minute shopping list, I’m bound to neglect an item.
But beyond my failure to remember toothpaste or a gallon of milk, I frequently forget the ways God has been faithful in my life, especially when I’m struggling to trust in Him.
I worry about the future, ignoring how the friends that surround me, the job I currently have, and the clothes that I’m wearing all serve as evidence of God’s past and present provision.
I fear the mountain before me, failing to reflect on the summits I’ve already conquered, my all-powerful God having carried me.
Because of our forgetfulness, God repeatedly calls us to actively practice remembering His faithfulness. [1] In the book of Joshua, God commands the Israelites to memorialize His miraculous parting of the Jordan river by taking twelve stones from the river’s center.
Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, “What do these stones mean?” tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. [2]
Likewise, in today’s lectionary from Deuteronomy, God calls the Israelites “neither to forget the things that [their] eyes have seen nor to let them slip from [their] mind all the days of [their] life.” [3]
God was faithful to the Israelites when He led them out of Egypt, going before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. [4] He was faithful when He parted the Red Sea, provided manna, carved the ten commandments into stone at the top of Mount Sinai, and made water come forth from rock. [5] Yet, despite encountering God in all these miraculous ways, the Israelites were quick to forget. Their hearts were unfaithful and they broke their covenant with God by making a false idol in the form of a golden calf. [6]
And we are the same. Without making an active effort to remember God’s faithfulness and take heart in knowing His goodness, we are prone to stumble and to turn to sources of false hope.
When I look back on the past, I easily question if God was really at work. I’m tempted to believe that I’ve achieved what I have by my own volition. Or in other instances, rather than identifying God’s steadfast hand, I call providence a stroke of luck.
Yet when I rediscover an answered prayer in a journal entry, my spirit is renewed. When I witness God’s faithfulness in a friend’s life, I am reminded that God is who He says He is and am provided with true hope.
In today’s world, God’s command for Christians “to remember” is preserved in practices like taking communion, in which we remember God’s broken body and spilled blood on the cross, His atonement for our sin and ultimate symbol of faithfulness. This practice is good and important; it reorients our hearts toward gratitude and a desire to honor God in return.
During this season of Lent, my challenge—to you and to myself—is to extend this practice of remembrance to other aspects of our lives, including meditating on how God has been faithful to us personally. And if you struggle to remember examples of His faithfulness, as I so often do, pray for Him to powerfully reveal them to you.
Let us remember and take heart as the Psalmist Asaph does in today’s lectionary, his meditative praise recounting God’s personal faithfulness in the lives of his ancestors and vowing to share God's continued wonders with the next generation.
I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.
We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord,
his power, and the wonders he has done. [7]
One day, we’ll be able to witness to our children the wonders of God in our own lives, that they may know of His divine mercy at work in theirs.
References:
[1] Remembering, Bible Gateway. (n.d.). https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/dictionary-of-bible-themes/8670-remembering
[2] Joshua 4: 4-7 [NIV]
[3] Deuteronomy 4:1–2,5–9 [NSV]
[4] Exodus 13:21 [ESV]
[5] Book of Exodus
[6] Exodus 32
[7] Psalm 78:2-4 [NIV]