Lent #13: Bad Memories?

I saw a story on 60 Minutes last night, about a woman who has such an incredible memory, she literally cannot forget a face. For most of us, such a detailed memory is hard to imagine...for some of us, it's not uncommon to walk from one room in the house to another, and forget why we came...

It's certainly true for me - my memory isn't what it used to be!

As I read today's Gospel, I kept thinking about the importance of memory in our spiritual lives. Over and over again in the Old Testament scriptures, the people of Israel were called to "remember" the works of God. In the book of Joshua, there's a story of how the people created a stone monument to mark the place where they crossed the Jordan River...the purpose of the monument was to remind the people of what God had done for them.

When it comes to the ways in which God has blessed us, healed us, delivered us from so many different trials of life...I think our memories, in general, are really quite bad. We forget so easily, and with the forgetting, our faith in the power of God to intervene in our lives is lessened...even lost.

In the Gospel reading from Mark 7, Jesus heals a man who had been deaf and mute for his entire life. By now, as we follow the story of Jesus' life and ministry, we know that nothing is impossible to Him...nothing is impossible to God...and Jesus himself said, "...if you have faith as small as a mustard seed...nothing will be impossible for you."

But we forget this lesson, don't we? Our forgetfulness may be one of the best reasons yet for reading the scripture on a regular basis, because if nothing else, it is a powerful tool to help us remember the works of God. And in our remembering, we are reminded that God can help us, and that He will.