Spiritual Alzheimers - Part 4

Do you have memories that are forever etched in your mind? I do.

• 4th grade. Mrs. Hornsby was crying and told our class that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded.
• Dan Seufferlein coming to the top of the stairs leading into our high school gym and announcing that Magic Johnson had A.I.D.S. and was retiring from basketball.
• Going to a college ministry team meeting when I lived in Iowa City, IA and Steve Swartz telling us as we walked in together that one of the Twin Towers had blown up. We soon found out that it was much worse than that.

The Israelites had a memory like this as well.

Last week we left off looking at the frequent and persistant Old Testament reminders from God to his people that they should REMEMBER. Do you find it peculiar that these people needed such frequent reminders?

We need to be mindful of the original audience of the book of Deuteronomy. These are people, many of whom, were probably present during the dramatic events of the Exodus. They would have had the mental capacity to remember the actual emotions they felt as Pharaoh's army was bearing down upon them. They would have remembered the horror of thinking that they would be killed or dragged back to Egypt to a renewed life of slavery. They would have remembered with clarity the mind-boggling wonder at seeing the waters part and walking through to safety. Who could possibly forget what they saw?

One would think that if you or I were present during those events we wouldn't need such frequent reminders of that grand event and what God had done. It would be forever etched in our minds as with a razor. Just like my memory of where I was when I heard about 9/11, it's a memory we couldn't forget if we tried, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

We might not forget the actual event in the sense that I can't recall it, but I might fail to meditate on the implications of that past event for my present and future life.

I'd like to say that if I were one of those Israelites I wouldn't need such frequent reminders to remember. Sadly, I think that I probably fail to perform much better. They lacked faith and failed to remember how God was amazingly faithful to them. I am a sinner. I am a forgetful person too. Has God parted the Red Sea of my life many times? Yes he has. I am forgetful. I fail to remember.

Thanks be to God that he knows this. Tomorrow we'll look at how God seeks to help us in this weakness.