[6] He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he  was still with you in Galilee: [7] ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Luke 24:6-7 NIV

I have a love-hate relationship with ‘remember’. The hate bit is all the guilt and fear that it conjures. Did I remember to shut the door, lock the car, give the child lunch money? Pass that message, pay that bill, call the vet? Did I say everything, present everything, be everything I should have? These usually occur in places where they are impossible to deal with. They’re, your basic late at night overthink or being plagued when stuck in the car with huge traffic. Alone, we are helpless to the pressure of curated fear and possibility of guilt that lurks just around the corner from reason.

There is also a very personal dislike of ‘remember.’ I’m a person whose life involves moving on to a new situation every few years. I don’t fit within the ‘remember’, which is about shared stories, a golden age of wonderfulness to which I was not party. I think it’s this use of remember that has really jaded me! My kids don’t share the same histories as their peers, the good times are inevitably before we arrived in the area and sets a deep longing in my soul for rootedness. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I play to win and we have fantastic ‘remembers’ in the local collective memory that do hold us close. But still,  I am, by personality and maybe even by culture, sceptical of the value of ‘remember’.

The value of remember

‘Remember’ used as a weapon can glorify an unworthy past, open old wounds, fan the burning pain of old sin, point to regret and to the lie of the good ole days.

But the context for this ‘remember’ is from the resurrection narrative. It is a command and one that carries an urgency with it. It is going to unwrap hope and life. This call to remember is indeed about shared stories, using the words of promise the women had heard to drive them onward into belief and the Life of Resurrection which Jesus had promised. This is the ‘remember’ of timely recall in a test, of knowing where the tennis shoe was last seen, of calling the school just in time. It reminds us to remember what we already know and to trust it.

This week, I had occasion to speak about and remember a time of ministry 30 years ago. Would the ‘remember’ be life giving or steal the joy of now? It has certainly challenged me. God is the same, I don’t subscribe to a mode of faith in God whereby I ‘understand Him to be different’ than God whom I knew, loved and whose gifts I experienced earlier in my life. God is the same. My faith may have become more crusty and worldly-wise in the intervening years. Motherhood may have made me more fearful. Age may have dimmed my heart’s eyes to the glory of God. The bruises of church leadership may have made remembering a place of pain rather than an oasis of hope and life, but all this is on me. God said he would take all that and bear it for me, travel it with me, take it from me. 

Remember God

God is forever the same. God is true to His word and His promises. I can remember that.

Mary, Mary, Joanna and the other women were called to remember the reality of being with Jesus and the words He had spoken to them in a particular place. They would be words that brought them new life and, because they remembered and believed, they shared the Good News with the apostles and with us today.

For sure, ‘remember’ can be toxic. But used properly, ‘remember’ is the route to life. It is the claiming of calling, a clarion call to be part of God’s good work. 

It wakes us to shake off the scales of doubt and the not of God ideas taught by culture and society.

What do you need to remember and step into today?

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