TODAY IS…

a splendid day to remember that God doesn’t forget us.

“Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has He in anger withheld His compassion?”  Psalm 77:9 NIV

God simply does not forget us. He cannot forget us.

It is true that, at times, we might encounter periods in our lives where we will think that God has forgotten about us. During those times we will feel helpless and alone and we will call out to Him and ask Him where He is.

It is human nature to experience periods of insecurity and loneliness, but it is during these times that we must find some way to remind ourselves that the Lord is never far away from us, even if He is silent, and even if we are encountering difficulty feeling His presence and hearing His voice in our hearts.

There could be a number of reasons for this, but none of them is the one that stands out in our mind: “God has forgotten me.” It is not God who forgets, but us. We forget that God may not always look at things in the same way that we do. We forget that God’s time table may be different from what we would prefer.

But God does not forget.

The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt longer than many of them would have liked, but it was not because God had forgotten them. The Israelites continued to groan under the burden of their slavery, “And God heard their groaning, and remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” (Exodus 2:24 KJV).

In those times when we might be about to entertain thoughts that God has forgotten us, perhaps we need to pause and look honestly at our situation. It is very possible that the situation we are crying out for rescue from contains a lesson that God wants us to learn first.

To truly live life to its fullest, we must embrace every situation we encounter as if it were a food which contains nourishment. God wants us to take all of the “nourishment” out of every situation we encounter so that we can then use it to shape our character into something useful to others.

God will determine the point at which He will step in on our behalf. It is His decision and His alone. Our responsibility is to try to understand what can be learned from what we are facing. It is our responsibility to draw the nourishment for our character from whatever the situation may be. And it is our responsibility to remember that God has not forgotten us, nor will He ever do so.

Actually, maybe there are some things that God forgets.

He forgets our sins because He forgives us, but that is all He forgets and today is a splendid day to remember that.

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Taken from “TODAY IS….A Gift From God”, (C) 2013 Tony Casson