Remember

The importance of remembering

Deuteronomy 4:7-10 For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today? “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children— how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

Isaiah 44:21 Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.

To not be remembered was/is a way to spurn or denigrate someone

Jeremiah 11:19 But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. I did not know it was against me they devised schemes, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.”

We’re good forgetters and have selective memories

Ecclesiastes 1:9-11 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

We want God to remember us

Exodus 30:16 You shall take the atonement money from the people of Israel and shall give it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the Lord, so as to make atonement for your lives.

“…it’s not the remembered past; it’s the forgotten past that enslaves us.” – C. S. Lewis, November 29, 1954. Exerpeted in Vol IV, No. 3, Christian History.

“The land is a part of us, and our memories cannot be untangled from the places that make us who we are.” – Emily Withnall, “Burned: Devastation is hard to face, but turning away is harder,” High Country News, December 2024, p. 36.