What would we do without our memories? Some of our memories bring pleasure while others revive painful experiences.
Various things will bring memories to life: an anniversary date, something said, a place revisited, a song, a scent, or an acquaintance turning up after an absence of many years.
It is very sad to see someone whose memory has gone. But isn’t memory remarkable when it functions well? We marvel at computers, but the human memory can be astonishing even though we are sometimes disappointed in its lapses and failures. Having a good memory can be a source of either joy or sorrow. Some people are comforted by their memories. Others are ‘haunted by a memory’, as they walk the streets with a guilty conscience, holding dark secrets known only to themselves and to God.
How strange that we often forget what we would like to remember and remember what we would like to forget!
Does God Forget?
Many would like to think that He does. One Bible example is of a wicked man saying to himself, “God has forgotten; He hides His face; He will never see” (Psalm 10:11). But Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes wrote, “God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15).
But what reassurance there is for those whose hope is in God. Although one of the strongest bonds on earth is between a mother and child, a mother may forget her child, but God has promised: “Yet I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).
Does God Choose Not to Remember?
There is, alongside this truth, another which may appear at first to be contradictory. The God who does not forget can “remember no more”. He says of those who have turned to Him for salvation: “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17). That which could have been held against us can be erased forever. “I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions, and like a cloud, your sins” (Isaiah 44:22).
John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” said at the end of his life, “My memory is nearly gone but I remember two things: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Saviour.”
Have your sins been blotted out?
Photo credit: goir
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