The Covenantal Act of Remembering

Over the orchard, the sky dome arcs a transparent azure, a clear window to the heavens.

I only know because I laid out on the grass under the limbs of the russet tree on a late September afternoon and stared up, long at that. By the end of summer, isn’t light exquisitely refined? Draping down through the leaves, this pure gold pools on verdant carpet, drenching me in warmth, radiant warmth.

Little Girl dangles above me on low, wrinkled branch, her string of bare toes wearing nothing but glorious rays.

“Take a picture of me, Mama,” she laughs.

“I am, child….” Her hair’s a halo of light.

“With my memory, I am.”

She leans down through the leaves, looking for my face.

“With your memory?”

I laugh. But she wants to know. “What’s a memory?”

A memory is this. This thing we’re making out here in the orchard laying out in perfect light.

What your brothers are doing over there by the pear trees with their homemade bow, stretching twine back and aiming carved twig arrows and laughter up into that blue.

What your sister is doing punctuating gravel lane with the singular dance of her pogo stick, hair flying, exclaiming too.

This is a memory, this rich, shimmering thing that glimmers in surprising, humble places, the thing that jewels a life.

Memory is this thing that God calls us to.

When God reveals himself in Exodus 3:15 as I Am who I Am, He also immediately says to Moses, “This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.”

In this central text, God weaves who He is with the act of remembering. He calls on us to know who He is by remembering. In touching our memories, we touch who God is, who He has been in our lives.

We mingle our voice with David’s: “I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will thank you forever and ever” (Ps. 45:17).

Isn’t thanksgiving essentially an act of remembering? I look back at pages of days, snapshots of moments, and discover that memory forms the basis of thanksgiving.

Isn’t that why God calls us to it?

He sat at the Last Supper, what we call the eucharist, which literally means “to give thanks” and exhorted us to “Do this in remembrance of me.”

We give thanks when we remember and our lives become an unending eucharist.

What we are making down in the orchard, what I’m memorizing of these moments, this is the critical covenant act of remembering God. God who has unveiled who He is through our personal histories. We ,too, are invited to enter into the story of God’s people who throughout the Old and New Testament recall again the memories of His mighty acts. So too His work in our own simple, marvelous stories.

Is that what we are doing when we journal, when we blog, when we press the shutter and freeze this frame in time? These are not insignificant acts. These are necessary, monumental, covenantal acts of remembering, our daily discipline of remembering the name of God in our lives.

I gather a basket of apples and the sunlight falls, and we look up into this late summer sky, clear through to the window of His heart.

Lord, today, how can I practice acts of remembering? Because I want to see who You have been to me more clearly.

Ann’s inspirational writing can be found at A Holy Experience.

Tagged as: devotional