Remembrance

We will be forgotten.  The things we accomplished will in large part be forgotten.  When the sands of time blow over us, all we considered important can be buried with us.  Who will remember and who will care? 

But God has made a way for remembrance.  He knows we can forget so easily.  By our very nature, we are prone to forget.  If it were not so, God would not have left us instructions in remembrance by which we may shape the future from the lessons and accomplishments of the past.  

What are our holidays but acts of remembrance?   And, in the Bible, there are numerous calls to remembrance.  For instance, the Passover, remembering how the death angel passed over the houses of the Hebrews, and they were freed from bondage. Another instance is the memorial of stones the Hebrews made after crossing the Jordan, and Jacob's stone at Bethel, after the ladder dream. Jacob set up a stone pillar and poured oil it as a memorial of God's promise.  And then there is "remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."

There are many calls  for remembrance throughout the Bible, but none touch the tinder of the  human soul to flame, as when Jesus said of the Lord's supper, "Do this in remembrance of me."   

And then there is the cross: in churches, in homes, sometimes worn, sometimes held closely in remembrance of how Jesus, Son of God, suffered so, and died, for us, for me, for you.  What better symbol of remembrance? 

But my cross is empty.  Jesus isn't on it.  The tomb is empty; Jesus isn't in it.  He lives!  And because He lives, I shall live also.  Ah, the cross, how marvelous, calling me to remembrance, that He "is the resurrection and the life:  he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believeth thought this?"  

  I touch the cross in remembrance.  I do believe.