Cultivating a Legacy of Remembrance

Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely
so that you do not forget. (Deut. 4:9)

Which is easiest to remember—the positive things that have happened to you, or the negative, painful things? We have a propensity as human being to remember the negative things more easily than the positive ones. In fact, researchers say that we could have nineteen positive experiences during any given day, and one negative one, but it will be the negative one we will most remember and dwell on.

Remembering requires intentionality. It is the constant warning of prophets and patriarchs. “Be careful”, “watch yourself closely”, “do not forget”, remember”! Why? Because we are so prone to wander and forget who God is and what He has done in the past. And that has devastating consequences.

Janet Thompson, author of Forsaken God? Remembering the Goodness of God Our Culture, says, “If we don’t remember what God already has done, we won’t believe what he is capable of doing in the future. Memory builds faith… Most [believers] don’t intentionally forget God; they just don’t try hard enough to remember him.”  (pg. 21)

God knew that if we didn’t make the effort to remember, it would take only one generation who forgets the goodness and greatness of God to completely make God irrelevant in the next generation. That’s why the epitaph of Judges 2:10 is so significant.

By the time the grandchildren of Joshua, Caleb and all the Elders of Israel who had led the Conquest into the Promised Land became adults, they had either never heard the stories of God’s faithfulness and wondrous provisions, or had completely forgotten them. Is it possible their fathers forgot to tell them because they had become so preoccupied with this good season of settling in the land that they forgot to tell the stories? It was probably not intentional, but neither was there intentionality about remembering. The problem is they never intentionally worked at remembering so another generation would know all that God had done.

So, what about you and me? How intentionally are we working to make sure the essential truths of the Gospel and our salvation are remembered and shared with another generation? We cannot afford to forget and or let them forget. We live in a time when the goodness of God is largely forgotten. We’ve have gotten complacent because we had it so easy for so long. God knows how prone we are to wander and forget. That’s why He so often reminds to remember and not forget.

This is so important that we need to keep talking about it so we don’t forget. One of the key roles God has given to grandparents is that of ‘storyteller’. We are to be, not only the repositories of family and faith history, but the tellers of those histories. The Psalmist declared, “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come” (Ps. 71:18).

We are in danger of another generation growing up, like that in Judges 2, who do not know the Lord or the amazing things He has done. We are but one generation away from our whole culture forgetting. Can we agree together to not let that happen on our watch?

Janet Thompson has reminded us that “memory builds faith” because it connects us to the “past faithfulness and goodness of God that we might truly believe all that He is capable of doing in our present and our future.”