Memorial Day is a day to remember. We have been making it a part of our lives since 1868! We remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and we celebrate those who can still share their stories.
But there is another Memorial Day we don’t usually pay attention to. There is no date in our calendars for it. And what we celebrate didn’t happen anywhere close.
We must go east of the Jordan River to the plateau of Moab where Moses addresses the Children of Israel as he tries to get them ready for Promised Land. It is a coach’s pep talk before the big game. And the word he repeats more than any other is . . . Remember!
Remember how the Lord your God . . .
spoke to you through His Ten Commandments. (Deut 4:10)
rescued you from slavery. (Deut. 5:15, 15:15, 16:12, 24:18,22; )
dealt with your biggest enemy. (Deut 7:18, 25:17)
led you through a difficult desert. (Deut 8:2)
equipped you to provide for your family. (Deut. 8:18)
disciplined when you went against what the Lord your God directed. (Deut 9:7)
wants you to tell your children the stories of direction, discipline, and protection. (Deut 11:2)
This is a good list to guide us to remember. We are good forgetters. We don’t encourage remembering in ways that energize our faith as much as we should. And we don’t make enough time to tell our stories to our families.
Take time this year for a special kind of Memorial Day activity with your family. Remember what God has done in the last year, in the last five years or more. Let the oldest in your family recount how God directed, rescued, intervened, and restored. Tell the stories.
Remember them by details and years and people. Record them in your memories, on paper, in a scrapbook. These are the stories that will move us forward in the right way. We need them just like the Children of Israel needed a detailed memory lesson about how God stepped into their lives at just the right time. It is the look back that sees the best summary.
This isn’t a time to worship the past because God will always do something new in a new generation. But it is time to recall the always consistent, always powerful, always surprising work of God in the tapestry of our lives because it is too easy to let present difficulties blind us from past providence.
I offer this prayer of remembering for you and your families this Memorial Day:
Pictures: Unsplash-Rimi, Wikimedia, Unsplash-Dariusz Sankowski
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