Lent, Day 32: NEVER FORGET FROM WHENCE WE COME

Scripture:   Deuteronomy 16:1-8  

Focus on the Word

Passover, for the ancient Jews, was more than a season on their calendar.  It was a time to draw near to God.  It wasn't a celebration; it was time to remember a profound thing in their story – the Exodus out of Egypt.  God told then that for seven days during Passover they were to eat, "the bread of affliction," unleavened bread, that would remind them of the affliction they suffered in Egypt.  God arranged all this so that the people would, as He said to them, "remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of Egypt" (Deuteronomy 16:3, NASB).

A part of the journey of faith we are on, as is true of all people of God through all generations, is never to forget from whence we come.  Like ancient Israel we, too, need events of remembrance.  These events are not celebrations so much as altars where we look back and remember that God, in His grace, has been our Deliverer, our Savior, our friend, our God.  We taste the bread of affliction, as it were, so that in the present moment we are drawn into the very life of our God, who has so involved Himself in our lives that the past no longer controls or condemns us.  

Christians are a remembering people.  We know that we live only because God has lavished His grace on us.  We don't forget our past; in fact, in our hearts and minds and actions we are invited to go back to that day when God shook the foundations of our lives and brought us into His life.  "Remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of the land of Egypt."

In Lent we remember our Egypt.  More than this, we remember that God has delivered us for that Egypt.  We are no longer captives.  We are free in Christ to experience all God has for us.  We don't forget the past; we just place it on the altar and remember God's Amazing Grace.  The past doesn't hold us in bondage; it is a reminder that the present and the future are not dependent upon our past, but upon our God.  Our song is,

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Robert Robinson, 1758)

Today’s Prayer

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.  Amen