We have been marooned in our house for two weeks now, fourteen long days of confinement within the walls of our home. Life has changed with the arrival of the coronavirus; we are experiencing a crisis, a time of national darkness and pain. But through the experience, we have learned to appreciate those insignificant things, like a trip to the grocery store, or fellowship after a Sunday morning church service. If those two weeks seemed long to me, I can’t imagine 370 days of confinement, a year spent on a boat, cleaning after smelly animals, dealing with unending mundane rituals, yearning for the feel of earth’s sod under my feet once more. The earth had been corrupted and judgment had fallen, so after a century-long shipbuilding project, Noah and his family entered the Ark, protected from the flood waters by the merciful love of God.
After the “waters returned from off the earth continually,” we read an interesting phrase: ”And God remembered Noah.” When we say that we remember something, we infer that we had previously forgotten it, so the phrase “God remembered” seems illogical. We serve a God Who possesses an infinite and all-knowing mind, perfect knowledge; He does not forget. The word remember is the Hebrew word zakar, to bring someone to mind and then act on that person’s behalf. Sometimes in our lives, we experience a long period of quietness, when God seems silent. I’m sure those 370 days for Noah and his family seemed endless, but it is often in those quiet seasons that God works to draw us closer, make us more grateful, more praying, more dependent. But when the night seems the darkest, God remembers, He rises up and springs into action on our behalf and sets our feet upon the dry sod once again.
Oh, that bundle of energy, that little boy who is up at the crack of dawn and never stops, my buddy Zachary, grandchild number four. Zachary’s name is interpreted remembered by God. My prayer for this young lad is that when he is enduring those dark, turbulent times in his life, he will join the psalmist and call out to his God, “Remember me, O LORD, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people, O visit me with thy salvation.” But more importantly, I hope that he will always be aware that there is one unique situation in which God does experience forgetfulness, for when a soul reaches out to Him for salvation, He promises to “forgive their iniquity, and…will remember their sin no more.” Praise God for that forgetfulness!
Isaiah 43:25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.
Lord, You are a God Who never forgets His children, yet You loved us enough to remember not our sins.