Memory

These Pages are related to life as it is lived in wealth and poverty, in faith and unbelief, in circumstances of blessing and cursing, in love and hate, in effectiveness and ineffectiveness, in relationships of unity and variance, and so comparisons/contrasts may be listed.  They are cast in two large contexts, human and Christian, with Scripture as the main textbook, and have been experienced by me now quite aged, partly self-sufficient and feeling compelled to communicate my take on life, education, work, family, society and Christian faith that makes context for balance and solutions.  It is directed especially to the young with the challenge to form life early, especially in the collegiate environment noted for both blessing and loss.  The blessing seems obvious for those who latch on to the meaning of maturity through neutrality of imposing evidence and experience.  Loss comes to those who don’t commit to the rigors of seeking the development of the mind and abilities to become the person he or she should become, so to make a person of service to society and God.  One of my presuppositions in all is that life is an evidence of God, and that human life has something of the image of God in it.  That ingredient in mankind will never die, although it experiences what is called death in the transitions it experiences.  As the infant dies to the mother’s womb when the umbilical cord is cut, so transitional life will die to Mother Nature’s environment for humanity.

I was generated from a rather poor home economically and culturally, but privileged to gain an education through graduate degrees, and a professional life that engaged the world in both secular and spiritual ministry.  I gained a wife and family that I loved, and continue to love, feeling the reciprocity of every family member that includes the mates of my children, and their issue to the fourth generation for those who are active to my life.  I united in marriage one of my great-grandchildren in 2014.  My joy for them rivals the joy they feel for themselves.  May God bless them, keep them, cause his face to shine upon them, and grant them his peace.  If they hurry matters along I will see a fifth generation – with appreciation.

The above is background for a few sentences about memory.  Although Scripture has much to say about memory, I have never heard a sermon on the theme.  I regret that I never focused on it although often referring to it in the course of fifteen thousand preaching appointments.  I did work on memory in my college teaching because it intrigues me from the magnificent success of ancient rhetoricians like Plato, Aristotle, Pericles, Cicero, and their fraternity with Augustine and other Christian classics, ancient and modern.  Especially did I sense it in the writings of Moses, David, Solomon, Prophets, and Disciples.

Recent scholarship has rather well established that memory is excellent at both recalling and forgetting.  It is important that we use the forgetting device for many things.  Studies show that once we enter school we soon forget what we remembered up to about five years of age.  I remember few events that preceded my entrance into kindergarten.  Each one was dramatic to my young mind: one occurred when I was three years of age.  In a dream I encountered a furtive person who broke into my grandmother’s home and threatened my life.  I became so distraught that my mother sent her brother for me.  I refused to be comforted without her.  I remember my interest when someone would light the gas jets for illumination in our home, and my uncle working with a crystal set powered from the battery on his car.  I remember a man ran over my little tricycle, and bought a replacement some days later.  These are a few remaining of many that I would have had at the time.  There is a lesson here, in that God means for us to remember the larger meaningful experiences of benefit that crowd out the old to forgetfulness.  This becomes vital to us in forgetting our confessed sins.  Some persons never learn to forget.  The memory can recall only so much.  At some point we likely forget something for a replacement.  Why is it that when we grow old we tend to remember the blessed factors in our lives and reduce, even to forgetfulness, the negative.  The happiest, most accepting, most patient persons I meet are the old folks thankful for what they have, remembering the ones most loved, and most loving – leading to comfort and joy. Forgiveness helps in forgetting negatives.