Remember...Remember...Remember.....

     If we do not remember specifically how and why we got into a situation or lifestyle that makes a new beginning essential to repositioning our lives, then we are likely to find ourselves right back where we started before year’s end. If we take inventory of where we are and “remember from what we have fallen,” then we are ready to repent and begin again. It is not always easy to do the emotional heavy lifting required to intelligently determine what should be kept and what should be thrown away. Not everything that we thought or did, that got us into a painful situation from which we need to be delivered, is necessarily wrong. Frederick Buechner, in his book, A Room Called Remember, speaks of how we may not only choose the wrong road but can also choose the right road for the wrong reason. It is good to love, but Buechner speaks of how we can love too much for the good of either the lover or the beloved.

     If we can bear to sift through the actions and motives that got us to where we are, it is likely that with God’s help we can correct our course and get to where we want to be. I cannot tell you what to forget and what to remember, what to hold on to and what to turn loose. The specific details about our acts and motives are so highly individualized that you cannot depend on someone else to tell you what to do. There are things in our lives that no one else can remember. Others can support, love, and encourage, but we have to do our own heavy lifting.

     Have you ever heard someone say that they came so near death that their whole life flashed before them? Has that video ever played in your life? People who have had “near death experiences,” who have clinically died and been brought back to the land of the living, often speak of being in the presence of overwhelming love and acceptance in the form of a being of light. They say that their whole life is reviewed in the presence of that incredibly loving being and they not only saw and understood themselves but felt unconditionally loved. Most of those who have had the experience testify that it was so wonderful that they did not want to come back.

     Perhaps if we could bring ourselves to really remember our past in the presence of God in this life we would not only create the essential conditions for a new beginning but also get a foretaste of what it will be like when we “lay it all out” in the presence of God in the world that is to come.

Remember. Remember. Remember.

Written by  Thomas Lane Butts and posted on the website "www.ministrymatters.com" on December 20, 2011.