How Soon We Forget
Scripture Reading: Psalm 106:6-23
On the long list of my weaknesses is my utter inability to remember names. It’s not that I don’t try. People have made helpful suggestions, I have read books and watched videos and put into practice the various tips I have been given. I can’t say they haven’t helped at all, but I can say I’m a failure at name remembrance. I know I am not alone in the struggle.
That is one kind of forgetting. There is another kind of forgetfulness that is even more common. It is peculiarly a problem of God’s people. This is not the kind of forgetting we do when we can’t recall or recite a particular fact or name, or when we walk into the kitchen and can’t remember why we are there or can’t recall what we were supposed to pick up from the store on the way home from work.
We are talking here about forgetting God and that doesn’t mean we forget he exists or that we are unable to give a decent recitation of biblical information about him. Forgetting God is forgetting that he matters and that he can and should be trusted in. It happens when we don’t extrapolate from what God did in the past to believe that God can handle our present distress. It is not that we don’t remember what God once did. It is that we don’t make the connection between what he did and what he will do. It is as if God has lost his power or died between then and now.
This is what Psalm 106 means when it says the Israelites “did not remember” (v. 7), “forgot [God’s] works” (v.13), and “forgot God” (v.21). What he is saying is under the distress of the present crisis they failed to bring to mind and make a reasonable application of what God had done for them in the past. God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt with miraculous displays of his power. Surely, that must mean he can feed them and give them water to drink in the desert. But that is the problem. They weren’t sure.
Thus, Jesus, when speaking about the Lord’s Supper, says, “do this in remembrance of me.” He is not worried that we will forget his name, the story of his life, death, and resurrection. Nor is he concerned that we won’t be able to give a reasonable theological interpretation of his history. No, what he means is that we can forget what he has done in the sense of not making a reasonable and proper extrapolation from that to what he will do in our present circumstances. He wants us to constantly remind ourselves through regular participation in communion of what he did, and realize it speaks to what he will do.
The past is a predictor of the present and the future. So, don’t forget.