Sunscreen’s on, and so are lifejackets. Pickles crunch, and so do the Lay’s. Whether you’ve been boating or backyard grilling this past weekend, my guess is, you did something as you remembered our brave, selfless veterans. That’s because the intangible act of remembering is often expressed in tangible acts, which is exactly what we see about God throughout scripture and is highlighted in the three stories below:
- Take Noah and the flood. In Genesis 8:1, “God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.” So when God remembered Noah, his family, and the animals, He made the flood waters recede.
- Similar language appears in Genesis 19:29 during the retelling of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: “So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.” This time, God’s memory of Abraham caused Him to save Lot from certain destruction. Again, memory = action.
- Lastly, Genesis 30 records the long list of Leah’s children, after beginning with her sister Rachel’s dramatic plea to their husband, Jacob, to give her a child, complete with the proclamation that she’ll die if she doesn’t have children (Genesis 30:1). “Then God remembered Rachel,” listened to her request, miraculously opened her womb, and allowed her to conceive (Genesis 30:22-23).
God, the Creator of the Universe, the Sovereign King of the World, who is infinite in wisdom, is a lot of things, but “forgetful” is not one of them. In the previous stories, He is not remembering these individuals in the sense that you remembered you were supposed to pick up your dry cleaning right when you pull into your driveway; rather, when he remembers them, He “marks” them, mentions them (and if you think “mentions” isn’t a powerful action, it is when Your voice had the power to create the entire world!), and “makes them to be remembered” (Strong’s Concordance H2145), which definitely rings true because if you’ve been in church for a while, chances are, you’ve heard of Noah, Lot, and Rachel.
Making flood waters recede, rescuing a man from raining sulfur, and giving a barren woman a child of her own are all the fruit of God’s mental act of remembering. What is the fruit of what you’re remembering?
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Are you remembering something small like how awkward it was when you ordered coffee this morning and struggled to make small talk with the barista, or how embarrassed you were in third grade when your dress flew up on the playground and everyone saw? Or are you remembering something more serious like how you weren’t there for your best friend, how that guy from church ghosted you, or how you gave into a temptation you felt sure you’d overcome?
The fruit of remembering these situations, in the sense of marking yourself by them, continuing to mention them, or making them be remembered will most likely be shame. And shame isn’t going to lead you where God wants to take you.
Shame doesn’t lead us where God wants to take us.
God doesn’t remember our sins anymore (Jeremiah 31:34), so we shouldn’t either. In fact, God instructs us in Isaiah 43:18 not to remember the “things of old.” Sure, we should be aware of possible temptations, and those might include things we’ve struggled with in the past, but we’re not supposed to mark ourselves with these past sins or struggles.
Instead, we should remember:
How GOOD God has been.
How He’s forgiven us for those sin patterns we’re still working to overcome.
How He’s provided all of our needs – spiritually and physically.
And if you can’t “remember” a time when He’s done these things for you personally, the Bible is chock-full of times He was faithful to people throughout the generations that preceded us.
Lamentations 3:21-23 provides the perfect model of remembering aspects of God’s character and reveals the fruit of doing so:
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
In a book of the Bible filled with sorrowful thoughts lies the prescription for hope: remembering God.
After a weekend of memorializing our fallen heroes, let’s think about what we’re memorializing every other day of the year. Are we marking our lives by our shortcomings or by God’s faithfulness?
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