Remember – To Save Your Life

This article is reposted from NavPress author Leslie Leyland Fields‘ blog. Leslie has been teaching and publishing stories around the world for 30 years using a dynamic, spiritually formative writing process.

The Life-Saving Act of Remembering

I just got home to Kodiak last night from visiting all my children. (We left when there were just 1,000 COVID-19 cases in the U.S. The world changed in a single week.) The airports and planes were empty.  It was eerie. I felt like a character in the Left Behind series. What? Everyone got raptured away to a virus-free afterlife and I’m left behind?

I’m now in a 2 week strict quarantine in my house in Kodiak, along with my husband and two sons. We hope we make it out alive—-and still loving one another.

Last week, in my blog I encouraged everyone to lament their losses, as so many people in the Bible did. And you did. Thank you for sharing your lives and your stories. I will not soon forget them.

Today, I want to encourage you another way: in the life-saving act of remembering.

Why do we need to remember these days? The present we’re living will soon be past, and what will remain of these days If we’re not taking notes, however hurried and small?

I urge this not just because I’m a writer. It’s mostly God’s idea.

Two Time God Calls His People to Remember

The Hebrew people are just about to enter the land God has promised them—a new life and land where milk and honey flowed from every ravine! So much anticipation! Forty years of waiting! But they aren’t yet ready to cross the threshold. They can’t enter without this:

However, be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you don’t forget the things which you have seen with your own eyes. Don’t let them fade from your memory as long as you live. Teach them to your children and grandchildren.

–Deuteronomy. 4:9, GW

What are they remembering? In many places, God tells them specifically what they’re to remember about their story:

• “But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there.”
• “Tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son the mighty things I have done in Egypt … that you may know that I am the Lord” (Exodus 10:2, emphasis mine).

They are to remember who they are and where they’ve come from and how they’ve gotten there. And this story is completely wrapped around God’s story: who He is and all He’s done with them, for them.

Without this remembrance, they are lost.

And so they were. They did forget who God is. In fact, the whole history of God’s people in the Old Testament is the story of the rise and fall of kings who do evil because they “forgot” God. Then occasionally a righteous man emerges who “remembered” God.

They were also told again and again to let others know who this God is:

Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.

–1 Chronicles 16:24, NLT

Our Own Calling to Remembrance

We too are called to remember and to “publish his deeds.” This is the perfect time to start. These are extraordinary times. Let’s not forget these days. I’m not asking you to write a book. I mean simply – take notes.

Most of us don’t have the energy right now to write full stories. Just a few sentences every day is enough. Your prayers. The exchange you had with your son at breakfast. The joking tussle over your stash of toilet paper. Your tears last night. The way God answered your prayer this morning. Whatever you can do.

Think of these notes as tiny seeds that you’re planting—that you may remember. That God will water and warm and grow.

And someday, very soon, we’ll all be writing and telling about “the amazing things He has done!”

With love and prayers for us all,

Leslie