Memory

Beginning this week, for those who are missing some kind of ongoing Bible Study, I'll be adding information at the end of each devotional for further engagement with the text. 

In addition, beginning in September, I'd like to do my devotions on some of your favorite topics, texts, themes, or books. Contact me at deaconallison12@gmail.com if you have anything you'd like to see in further devotions. I'll get to as many as I can over the course of the year!


 So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the LORD your God with which I am charging you. You have seen for yourselves what the LORD did with regard to the Baal of Peor - how the LORD your God destroyed from among you everyone who followed the Baal of Peor, while those of you who held fast to the LORD your God are all alive today.

 See, just as the LORD my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!" For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

 But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children - how you once stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when the LORD said to me, "Assemble the people for me, and I will let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me as long as they live on the earth, and may teach their children so"; you approached and stood at the foot of the mountain while the mountain was blazing up to the very heavens, shrouded in dark clouds. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, which he charged you to observe, that is, the ten commandments; and he wrote them on two stone tablets. And the LORD charged me at that time to teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy. ~ Deuteronomy 4:1-14


 Memories are the key, not to the past, but to the future. ~ Corrie ten Boom

"But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children's children"

Moses is preaching to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land.  It's a speech of both remembrance and one of preparation for the new.

We've all gotten speeches like that in our life. At times in life where we are transitioning to something new: graduation speeches in high school as you get ready to go to college; facing the unknown as you move to a new place for a new job after never living anywhere else; retiring after years of employment.

And there was a time when at church that was how we learned rememberance.  We passed our faith to our children through lessons, stories, Confirmation, and Sunday School, and they took that faith and made it their own. And when the time came to embark on their adult life of faith, they stayed close to their denominational home.

But now increasingly, those remembrances are not part of the faith life of many.  More and more are coming to church for the first time - seeking, hoping.  Coming without the grounding of a denominational faith life.  Or perhaps coming after being hurt or turned off by a denomination and looking for something new.

The promises of hope however remain.  Whether we come from a life grounded in a belief passed down by our parents, or whether we are searching because our memories of faith are new or perhaps cloudy, God is still waiting to show us the Promise of hope and life.

For those of us who have been grounded in the faith for our whole lives, we are the ones who are there to help those who are new find their way into the unfamiliar land they have entered.  We are there to be hope for them as they find their own memories in the promise.

God of memory, remind me always to trust in your promises and to share those promises with others.  Amen
Thoughts for engagement:

 - What are the memories you have that were built in either family or in church that affected your faith life?
- Why was memory so important to the Hebrew people as they entered the promised land?
- What do you think Corrie ten Boom's quote means? Find a short biography of her life (perhaps on Wikipedia). How then is this quote true for her?
- How can you help build memories for others as they are on their faith journeys?

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