The Art of Christian 'Remembering'

One of the foundational stories of the Old Testament is recorded in Exodus 1-15 and retold a hundred times over throughout the rest of the Bible.

The Exodus story looks back to the creation of the world (Gen. 1-2), the fall of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3), and God’s call of Abraham (Gen. 12) and his family to be God’s means of rescuing the world.

However, God’s rescuing people are enslaved in Egypt at the end of Genesis.

Those called to be rescuers themselves need rescuing.

It is within this context that God, through Moses, effects Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Then, when they arrive at Mount Sinai (Ex. 20-40), God reiterates his earlier promises to Abraham to give the promised land of Canaan to his family.

Our key passage, Deuteronomy 4:9, presupposes this whole story and is situated just across the Jordan River from the promised land. Moses is recounting the great acts of God in this peoples’ past:

“But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—” (Deut. 4:9 NRSV).

Israel is on the precipice of the promise. But the key to flourishing in God’s promise is cultivating the memory of God’s dealings with us in the past, so that we become utterly grounded in the character and person of Him. And this cultivation is achieved by Israel’s repeated remembering all over again the acts of God on their behalf.

This remembering is an art. It has to do with repeated retelling of God’s faithfulness both in Scripture and in our own lives. This is the remembering we work at week in and week out at Ooltewah United Methodist Church. Come join us as we work at the art of Christian remembering so that we can flourish in God’s promises.