“Now what did I come for?”  How many times each day to you say this?   You are working in one room and remember something you need.  By the time you get where you were headed, you forget why you came.   Granted, it becomes harder to remember as we age, but the truth is that our minds are just too crowded.  We live in the information age.   We are exposed to more new information in a single day, than Eighteenth-century scholar and pastor, Jonathan Edwards encountered in his entire life.

All that data is hard to hold on to.  Scientists tell us our brains retain every scrap of experience our senses ever encounter.  The unfolding folds of our gray matter have more storage capacity than the world’s largest super-computer.   So, if true, why is it so hard to remember simple things?  And why do memories change and diminish when conditioned by experiences and perspectives gained since those memories were made?

A strong memory is more about strategy than capacity.   Information technologists recognize this in regard to data storage and retrieval.  The capacity of a database is not as significant as its indexing strategy.  Unless you can accurately and rapidly retrieve information, it is immaterial how much you can store.   When it comes to human memory many experts advocate building a “memory palace” where you can categorize and store memories in a visual structure created within your mind.   The ritual of walking through the “memory palace” proves to be a highly effective strategy for remembering.

But the use of rituals to aid in remembrance is not the innovation of contemporary pop psychologists.   It was instituted by God immediately after the fall.   Man made sacrifices to remember the cost of sin and the only means of escaping it.   As history progressed toward the cross, God added ‘religion’ to the ‘spirituality’ of the Covenant of Grace.   The ritual of the tabernacle and later the temple enabled the people to remember what God had done to deliver them from sin and sorrow, what he does, and what he was going to do finally and fully in Christ.   

The rituals and ‘means of grace’ he appointed are vital to faith and life.  They activate and improve our spiritual memory.  Help us keep proper perspective.  This is why the statement “I’m spiritual, but not religious” is untenable.  Spirituality without ‘religion’ will always become cognitively impaired as it forgets that I am not god and my feelings and opinions not ultimate truth.   God graciously gives us the means of remembrance.

On the eve of God’s great deliverance of his Old Testament people from Egypt, he paused the action and gave instructions about a meal of remembrance.   This celebration was to be a lasting ordinance to remind us that He alone is the God who delivers.   And in the same way, on the eve of God’s complete and final act of deliverance in the Cross, Jesus appointed a feast of remembrance.  “Remember,” he said.   And this remembrance is more than thought.  It is action through which we declare to succeeding generations the mighty saving works of our God.   Without these ‘means of grace’ we will forget.

The biblical book of Judges illustrates this. “Every man did what was right in his own eyes”  because they forgot.   Judges 2:8-12 is one of the saddest passages in all Scripture. And the rest of the weirdness of Judges is the fruit of this spiritual amnesia.

And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.

Judges 2:8-12

Exodus 12 describes God’s preparation of the people for the greatest story of deliverance the ancient world would ever see.   A story that melted the hearts of their enemies.  A story known far and wide.   But before the final plague, God prepared the people, giving them rituals for remembrance.  Join us as we consider the Passover in Exodus 12 and the importance of remembrance.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.