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The folly of forgetting
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Trouble remembering?
Recently, I wrote about the biblical admonition to ‘remember.’
Today, I want to look about the ‘folly of forgetting’ and the consequences of failing to remember.
We are people who are prone to forget.
We forget birthdays.
We forget anniversaries.
We forget appointments.
We forget faces.
We forget names.
There are now entire sectors of industry which are oriented to helping us remember. You can purchase books on “How to Increase Your Memory.” You can find tons of helpful links on Google, which assert that they can help you improve your ability to remember. Curriculum and pre-packaged kits can be purchased at shopping mall kiosks, which assure a boost to your brain’s ability to remember.
Or, if you want to save yourself the hassle and the time, you can purchase a day planner, load it up with your appointments and other vital information, attach plenty of post-its, and carry around a tangible reminder of everything that is necessary and vital for you to remember.
Another solution is to rely on technology to help increase your capacity to remember. On my iPhone, I have an iCalendar, where I can store my appointments, as well as any number of other important dates. I also have a Notepad, on which I can record quick notes to help me jog my memory. I also have a program known as “Evernote,” which allows all of my technological devices to be synced together in such a way that whatever notations I make on one device are shared with all of my other devices. I have another program, known as “reQall,” which is further supposed to help me remember and recall whatever vital information I might need, at a moment’s notice.
Yet, with all of these “memory enhancing” technologies, we can still forget. We can still forget some of the most important things in life.
We can still forget to spend time with our families.
We can still forget to rest and relax, allowing our bodies the necessary time to recuperate.
We can still forget to be quiet and still before God.
We can still forget to be patient, loving, kind, self-controlled, etc.
We can still forget to love the Lord our God with every fiber of our being and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
In short, even with all of the various forms of aids and assistance, we can still be really forgetful people. Our schedules can still be entirely too full. Our days can still be obnoxiously long. Our lives can still be cluttered and chaotic. We can still, amid the hustle and bustle of everything, forget those things which are most important. And, if we do forget, we do so at our peril.
Our relationships with others can only be forgotten for so long, before they begin to come apart at the seams.
Our relationship with God can only survive on auto-pilot, but for a very short time.
Our bodies can only be improperly cared for, but for a short while, before they begin to rebel and suffer the effects of being neglected.
What is more, the mistakes that we have made are bound to be repeated, if we fail to remember.
(This article first appeared at Ministry Musings by Josh Rhone)
