The other day I had a chance to have lunch with a good friend of mine who happened to be in town (and who is an avid reader of my blog). We worked at camp together in 2004, and we had a good time catching up and remembering stories of the summer we spent together. But it was at this lunch that he reminded me of a story of our friend George involving a lonely Sunday and a lack of toilet paper. This is a great story, one that I have told many times and used in many of my talks with students (and one I plan to use in a talk very soon), but I somehow had forgotten it. I was thinking about this, and I was kind of wondering how I could have forgotten such a great story. As we were talking at lunch, there were plenty of things from that summer that he remembered and I did not. I think we do this in our spiritual lives all the time. We get caught up in all sorts of other things and we forget the things of God.
We see more defeats than victories, and we let our defeats defeat us. When we do this we forget His grace.
We see our present circumstances and we wonder if things will ever improve. When we do this we forget His providence and plan for our lives.
We see our trials and temptations as insurmountable obstacles. When we do this we forget His power.
We look with uncertainty at our future and we wonder if God will carry us through. When we do this we forget His faithfulness in the past.
We think we can do everything ourselves. When we do this we forget our own humanity and His deity.
With so many questions and concerns in life, it’s good to know that there’s a God who is always there for us. The problem is, often in our lives we’ve forgotten more things about God than we currently remember. We conveniently forget the things we have known about Him so that we can justify our own sinfulness or throw ourselves a pity party. My lunch this week reminded me of all the stories I’ve forgotten, but it also reminded me of the Savior that I had so frequently forgotten and so desperately want to remember.
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