On Remembering

(Memorial Weekend)

Remembering has consequences. Sometimes celebration and praise.  Sometimes anger or grief. Sometimes honoring which births new commitment.

Some don’t want to remember. It’s too painful and anesthesia may be sought in addictions; and worse suicide. Images, sounds and smells dredge up fears, sadness, regret or shame. Memory may feel like a trap; no escape generating resignation. I suppose hell is hellish because it enshrines sorrow perpetually. Ugliness ever before the eyes of the soul.  We are distressed when loved ones know the death of memory in Alzheimer’s; we see them straining to recollect names and faces only to be frustrated or confused in their oblivion. It’s a disease that denies personal sacred story.

Memory also breeds joy and partially slakes our thirst for liberty. In this sense memory breaks down the prison walls of failure and disappointment; staking her claim in ground watered by grace, mercy and love. Birthdays, anniversaries, family and class reunions serve as Ebenezer stones; mile markers of God’s compassion and covenant faithfulness. “Till now the LORD has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12, ESV)

Remembering links generations in traditions, values, hopes and dreams. In remembrance families, citizens, parishioners and even strangers form strands anchored in the past, threaded through the present and extending into the future. For some, into eternity. Remembrance excavates our lives to foundations resting on promises. Remembrance gathers up the pieces of our experience and reconstitutes our sense of purpose. Integrity depends on this work of remembering; individual, congregational, societal.

Slain before the foundation of the world

Redemptive memory is bought with blood. Cemeteries across our land are silent testimony to the sacrifice and selflessness which seal our national identity. The fallen know that America is about one fundamental value – Liberty. Our common bond in liberty transcends race, ethnicity, creed or class. In a larger sphere, students and followers of the Lamb know that heaven’s glory radiates in part due to memory of the Cross. Eternal wounds will forever provoke resurrected remembrances of life-sustaining love. In heaven the angels will reverently puzzle what Grand Memory could possess the Redeemed?

See you at the Potter's wheel!

G.K. Sexton

Healed Memories vs. Cleansed Consciences 

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins."

Isaiah 43:25