One of the aims of this blog is to remind people of God’s faithfulness. It’s all too easy, given our human tendency to forget, to lose sight of what God has done: in the bustle of life, in the everyday busyness of ordinary events, in the sheer monotony that is our normal life, we simply forget.
The people of Israel tended to forget all God had done too. We look back at those nation-changing events in Exodus – the plagues, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea – and wonder incredulously how Israel could so quickly forget the slavery of Egypt and the miraculous deliverance of God, how they could lament the loss of the cucumbers, onions and garlic of Egypt and forget the bondage of slavery there, how they could witnesss God’s daily provision of manna and still complain. Yet we too so easily forget what God has done and fail to remember His provision and providence; we too easily lapse into complaint and doubt.
Forgetting is not necessarily a deliberate act, but the antidote is what we actively, deliberately, determinedly choose to remember. Anamnesis – the act of remembrance, the opposite of amnesia – is necessary. We choose to remember what God has done in the past to remind us of His faithfulness, truthfulness, dependability and power for both the present and the future. We need to be strong in the Lord if we are to stand and one way to be strong is to remember what God has done.
This blog, then, is a reminder of God’s provision and grace to a particular people in a particular place at a particular moment in history. It is a call to remember God’s faithfulness (which reaches to the skies and which continues through all generations). It is a stone of remembrance like the twelve stones placed by Joshua in the middle of the River Jordan when the Israelites were finally about to enter the Promised Land. It is a way for us not to forget all God has done.
‘Everything changes, but You stay the same;
Your word and kingdom endure.
We lean on the promise of all that You are
And trust forevermore.’
(‘How Great Is Your Faithfulness’, Matt Redman & Jonas Myrin)