Memory and Memorial Day

Memory and Memorial Day May 30, 2022

Memorial Day is a holiday devoted to memory.

Memory is a super-power that human beings have, the ability to summon to our present consciousness the experiences of the past.

The ancients considered memory to be one of the three faculties of the mind, along with reason and the will.  We would describe what they meant by “memory” as imagination, the power of conjuring up mental images.  The three faculties would thus be the imagination, understanding, and volition.  The point is, we can think not only with ideas but with tangible, sensory pictures.  We can call up mental images from our past, but we can also project images of what might happen in the future (as in planning and “looking ahead”) and of what is never intended to happen (as in fiction and daydreaming).

Memory defines our identity.  That we can remember our past unifies our consciousness, so that we do not simply exist in the present, as in a sequence of one moment after another.  Rather, our life constitutes a whole, from childhood until now.  And all of the people in our lives all through that time–our parents, our siblings, our grandparents, our old friends, our teachers–continue to make us who we are now.

Here in Oklahoma we remember such people on Memorial Day, which is when we put flowers on the graves of our loved ones.  Strictly speaking,  Memorial Day as a national holiday asks us to remember those Americans who died fighting for their country.  There have been about 1.3 million of them.  We don’t have actual memories of most of them throughout history, of course, but we can imagine them.  But some of us do have actual memories of people we have known who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, or other faraway places.  Calling them to mind is the true way of celebrating Memorial Day, far more than grilling out and getting the summer started.

And yet, even Memorial Day as a celebration of summertime fun can remind us–there is that concept again!–that joy often depends on sacrifice.

Which brings us to a Christian appropriation of the secular holiday.  Memory and memorials in the Bible speak to us of faith and the gospel.

The Bible speaks of a number of “memorials,” including “stones of remembrance” that were erected to remind future generations of the works of God (Exodus 13:3–624:4Deuteronomy 27:1–8Joshua  4:2-3; 2224:24–281 Samuel 7:12).  Also, the Passover rituals are described as a “memorial” (Exodus 12:14) and there were “memorial” sacrifices.

A Bible Gateway search for “remember” turns up many exhortations to remember the Lord and to remember His mighty deeds of the past as a way to build up one’s faith in the present.  But what surprised me is the number of references to God remembering.  He remembers His promises, His covenants, His people.

Furthermore, there are multiple passages about how God forgets.  “I will remember their sins no more”  (Hebrews 8:12).  And how we are sometimes told not to remember.  “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

And then there are passages like this:

“Remember not the former things,
    nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert. . . .

“I, I am he
    who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,
    and I will not remember your sins.
Put me in remembrance. (Isaiah 43:18-19; 25-26)

We are to forget, God will forget, yet we must remember Him.

 

Photo:  Memorial Day 2013 by Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

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