Word of Encouragement (12/21/2022)
Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. (Deut. 32:7-9)
“Remember”—here is an important word for our life in covenant with God. The command to remember occurs a lot in the Bible. This shouldn’t surprise us. The importance of the act of remembering (or the ability to do so) cannot be exaggerated. Our life exists in the continuum of time, amid the ever-developing history, personal and worldwide. We are here at this moment in time and history because of all that happened in the past. Our sense of who we are and our place in this world is the conglomeration of all our past experiences and our perception/remembrance of them. There are things we would rather forget and recall never again. But imagine how disorienting and terrifying it must be not to remember the past!
If so, how much more important it is to remember as we live in covenant with God, especially how it all began! Even though we live in the continuum of time, there are many twists and turns in the development of history. For believers, the most significant turning point in life is when we entered a covenant relationship with God. We can say that our life is divided between BC and AC—“Before the Covenant” and “After the Covenant.” It is imperative for us to “remember” that moment because that is when everything changed for us—our understanding of God, our self-perception, our worldview, our goals and desires, our delights and joys, the trajectory of our lives, etc.
It is no wonder that we are constantly exhorted to remember this crucial moment in our lives. Those who are married know how important it is to remember their wedding vows to love and cherish their spouses both in good times and bad times—especially when things get tough in marriage. Remembering those vows can jolt us out of our present preoccupation with how “hard” and “bad” things are now and reorient our hearts and minds to the lifetime commitment we made and the fond memories of things that are worth salvaging and improving.
This dynamic of remembering was woven into the covenant law, by which Israel was called to live. The preamble to the Ten Commandments was, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). In fact, everything that was recorded from Gen. 1:1 to Ex. 19:25—from the creation of the heavens and the earth in the beginning to the calling of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and delivering the Israelites from the Egyptian bondage by His grace—was the grand preamble to the Law. Since the preamble provided the theological and historical reason for Israel’s obedience to the Law, it was crucial that they remembered it.
It is important for us to remember, too—all that is recorded in the entire Bible, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of God’s promise to save us, the full expression of God’s love and grace for us. Let us not forget, especially as we celebrate the birth of Christ during this Christmas season.