Remembering…
I remember the days of long ago;
I meditate on all your works
and consider what your hands have done.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul. —Psalm 143:5,8
It is not enough to see only the face of today, and wonder what the future will look like. It is not wise to enter tomorrow as if there was no yesterday. It is not safe. The present rests upon the past. The future is an extension of the here and now.
The child of God, and heir of glory, needs to know this.
King David knew it. In this psalm he implores his God for mercy and deliverance. “Come to my relief…!” he begs. (V.1) “The enemy pursues me” he cries out, “he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead.” (v.3)
Troubles, fears, and danger do something to us deep inside our souls. David admits, “So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed.” (v.4)
Maybe we haven’t faced the same kind of enemies that David did. Buy we surely know what “troubles, fears, and dangers” are. We also know the cause of these. We know the name of our chief enemy. He is called “Satan.”
Remove the works of the Devil from life, wipe out everything that he brought into human existence—sin, shame, sorrow, death—and there would be no more troubles, fears or dangers. There would be no disease. There would be no war. There would be no regret.
But that is not the way it is. That is not the type of world we are living in. Paradise on earth was forfeited in the Garden of Eden. One of the earliest books of the Bible was written by a man called Job. This is what he had to say about life in his day: “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.” —Job 14:1
Moses was another early writer of Sacred Text. These are his words: “The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” —Psalm 90:10
David knew these words. He knew what he was facing on this day in his life. And he knew what to do!
“I remember the days of long ago;” he declares. “I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.”
David faced the future by remembering the past! More specifically, by remembering what the Lord his God had done in the past. This is exactly what the Lord enables us to do by providing us with his eternal Word. In that Word of God are the accounts of sea and land, stars and planets called into being by the sound of his voice. In that Word are the stories of people in whom, and through whom, the gracious God worked wonders and blessings.
He bids us, “Remember Abraham! Remember how I raised him up to become the father of nations, and the ancestor of the Savior.”
“Remember Daniel! Remember Joseph. Remember Peter. Remember John. Remember Paul.”
The life of each of these people carries the testimony of the power and love of a God who transcends our earthly existence and is able to do what is impossible by our standards.
But when we now look back over the days of long ago, there is one person standing on the horizon of time who towers over all else. “Remember Jesus!” “Remember who he is. Remember what he did. Remember what he will do.”
David looked ahead towards the victory over sin, death, and the Devil on Golgotha. We look back.
When we remember the days of long ago, we see the long line of people who prayed the same words David used in this psalm: “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love.” With David, they confessed the same basis for their hope: “for I have put my trust in you.”
From our vantage point we can look out to see how their trust was justified, how their hopes were realized, and how their future was secured.
We don’t know what a David or Samuel looked like. We cannot remember seeing Peter in action, or John taking us by the hand.
But there are other faithful servants of the Lord whose faces we can remember clearly. We can still hear their voices in our ears. In our mind’s eye we can still see them carrying out their life in our midst.
This is the time of year when we especially remember people we once knew on earth who have gone on to glory ahead of us. Some might have been friends or neighbors. Some of them might have been our teachers or pastors. Some might have been grandparents. Some may have been much closer to us than that.
What are we to think of this? What are we to think of them? Did they not have their troubles, too? Did they not face dangers? Did they not fear? At times, did they not wonder and doubt?
How did it work out for them? What can we learn from them? Do they provide examples of courage and faith? Do they remind us of truths that stand firm no matter how much lives change?
Do we just mourn their passing, or do we also rejoice in their victory?
Do we only remember that they once lived with us, or do we also recall how God worked through them in their lives?
Do their words and works yet live on after them, or are they forgotten like dry flowers blown from our yard by the winter wind?
The lives of God’s people bear testimony to the power and purpose of the Lord who holds those lives in his hands. Any greatness achieved, any blessing passed along, was the work of the God of Grace and Glory.
“Show me the way I should go,” David calls out, “for to you I lift up my soul.”
This, too, is our prayer. Today we stand again at the doorway of tomorrow. We do not know what awaits. We do not know where all the dangers lie. At times we cannot even tell the difference between good and bad; or safe and deadly.
Our God does. He sees. He knows. And he hears.
We turn our attention to him. We place our trust in him. We remember what he has done in the days long ago. We remember the people that he has used to guide and encourage us in the past.
We know what the future holds because we know who holds the future. We know about victory and joy and peace. We know whom we are following, and where this path leads.
We are not left in the depths. We do not live as broken and defeated. We ascend to heavenly heights. We can catch a glimpse of the glory to come.
With David of old, we call out to our God: “for to you I lift up my soul.”
And we remember again: we are his—now and for evermore.
Amen.