Tag: remember

Do We Remember?

Do we remember 9/11? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I normally write these blogs now a day ahead of time. That’s just the nature of the beast with working a job on campus and with having classes as well. Sunday night, I’m writing and when I schedule the blog, I see that the next day is 9/11. I’ve already written a blog. I don’t want to change it.

That kind of saddened me. I wonder if it’s natural with the passage of time. It could be like remembering the anniversary of the death of a loved one. It gets harder and harder to deal with. I remember when the day came that would have been my 11th anniversary, I was dreading how I would handle it. Nowadays, it doesn’t even register a lot of times.

At the same time, there is an awkwardness on campus around here. I know many students here that have no memory of 9/11. Some of them were too young when it happened. Some of them weren’t even born when it happened. These people have never lived in a world where the Twin Towers were standing. Naturally, I don’t fault them for it, but I realize these are different times.

My parents grew up in the generation that saw Kennedy assassinated. I can’t relate to that at all. I don’t know if they still remember that every time when that day comes around. Maybe not.

When the Challenger exploded, I was five years old. I really don’t remember much about that experience. There’s no doubt for me that politically, 9/11 was the defining moment of my generation. Yes. I can still remember where I was when I first heard the news. Nothing else really comes close.

I do know I lost sight for a time and thus am writing this blog late. That again leaves me wondering if that means the impact of it is lessening. In some cases, it has to. How would it be if the impact of negative events in our lives never lessened? I tell people that my divorce still hurts every day, but it sure is a relief it doesn’t hurt as much as it did then.

We cannot expect any emotion to last forever, which is a good thing, even for a good emotion. Lewis once wrote that it’s a good thing the feeling of falling in love doesn’t last or else we would never be able to function in our lives. Many people have an ecstasy come over them when they come to Christ, but that also doesn’t last or else we would never learn how to walk through struggle. People could likely become Christians only because they want good feels.

Despite that, we can remember the lessons regardless. I can lose a loved one and not feel the pain and still remember the good times and the lessons that I learned from them. I no longer have the pain from scoliosis surgery, but I sure can remember the times that I couldn’t walk and how I shouldn’t take those for granted. The problem is, learning lessons does require more effort. It takes more to work on those and practice them. It takes virtue.

Let’s hope this generation coming up learns that, or else we could repeat history again.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

How Will You Be Remembered?

What legacy will you want to leave behind? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My boss at the seminary post office likes to listen to older music on records and he has a record player in there hooked up to a sound system. I came in Monday and heard a song I didn’t recognize and I was told it was Gordon Lightfoot singing. The song was Approaching Lavender, which I came to enjoy.

Then I got home that evening and right before going to bed I learned that Gordon Lightfoot had died that day.

So I listened to that song one more time on my Alexa before I went to bed.

I am not saying that Gordon Lightfoot was a Christian. I do not know. I do know that he will be remembered for a lot of great music. Of course, if he wasn’t a Christian, it won’t count anything for him eternally, but when people think about the death of Lightfoot, they will think of music.

Meanwhile, just recently also, Jerry Springer died. If I think about his legacy, what will I think of? I will think of a show with a bunch of people sleeping around and acting as dumb as possible and throwing chairs at one another with security guards restraining them and the crowd chanting “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!”

I know Jerry Springer did other things like being a mayor and hosting other shows like the game show Baggage, but what he will be remembered for is the show named after him.

This has left me thinking about this kind of topic and it’s something we need to think about. How will we be remembered? There are many people today we know as saints and we know them for how they lived. There are many people who were Christians and we don’t know them explicitly for being Christians, but they also made significant contributions in other fields.

Many of us will live simple lives, but even then, we can leave a great legacy. All we know about Hannah was that she was a faithful woman who gave birth to Samuel, but she left behind that legacy. For many people, their memory will be of them as a loving spouse and parent. If you’re single, you can be remembered also for your contribution to your community and how you treated your neighbors.

Today also, it’s even easier to leave a legacy. I encourage people who are grandparents to start making YouTube videos that can be kept private to leave behind for their grandchildren and their children as well. They can get to actually see you speaking and know what you looked like and your voice. It can be a treasure for them. Just tell them about your life today and what the world is like today.

We may think our lives are mundane, but in the end, we will all be remembered and if we do nothing to make a difference with this life, we will not be remembered long. Think about your legacy today. Think about how you want to be remembered.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Did Joseph Forget?

Did Joseph forget about his suffering? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Joseph does manage to escape prison when he’s thrown in by impressing the Pharaoh by interpreting his dream. The Pharaoh places Joseph second in command in Egypt and gives him a wife. Joseph has two sons through her and the oldest is named Manasseh while the youngest is named Ephraim.

Ephraim refers to being fruitful. We can understand that. Joseph is having a very fruitful time in Egypt. However, the name Manasseh is given because Joseph says that he has forgotten the suffering that he went through. He had forgotten his trouble and his father’s household.

Had he? When Joseph’s brothers show up not too far down the road, Joseph does remember them. He knows about them. If he’s able to talk about his father’s household, surely he hadn’t forgotten about his father’s household. Besides that, Joseph should have good memories of his Dad who favored him.

It’s my contention that sometimes when the Bible uses the word forget or remember, it doesn’t mean what we often think it means. In the flood, it says God remembered Noah. It’s not that God is looking down at the flood and sees that ark floating and thinks “Noah! I forgot all about Him!” Instead, it means that God returned his focus to Noah.

If that’s what it means to remember, then that would mean that Joseph had a new focus in life. He was not thinking about what happened growing up and how his brothers mistreated him and all the time he spent in prison. Instead, he was focusing on the future.

Joseph had come to see that God was with him in everything regardless of how his life was going. One day he’s in prison and has been forgotten by everyone. The next day, he’s the second in command in Egypt. The reader knows that God has been with Joseph granting him favor in the eyes of all who see him the whole time, but Joseph does not have that outside perspective. He is living the story that we are the spectators of.

Joseph having children is a sign to him that things are working out. God has allowed him the honor of having a family and having descendants. These are things he would have missed out on also if he had not been faithful in the house of Potiphar.

Speaking personally on this, divorce has been the worst event I have ever gone through. Something that has kept me going is a saying that I have heard before and I don’t remember where, but it’s that the best revenge is a life well-lived. I have decided I don’t want to be a victim of my past. I want to rise above. When I go to work, I try to see it as just a stepping stone. It is one spot on my journey and somehow it will lead to another and God has me here for a reason just like he had Joseph in prison for a reason that he didn’t understand.

After all, picture if Joseph had never been sold into slavery and then never been picked by Potiphar and then never thrown into prison. He would never have been made known to Pharaoh. He would never have led Egypt and the world would have suffered a famine. Joseph could have died anyway then. Every step of his suffering was used by God.

Joseph no longer had his focus on the past. He was looking to the future. Paul said the same in Philippians 3. He was forgetting what was behind and looking to what was ahead.  (Ironically, what was behind him was pretty good actually. It just didn’t compete with Christ.) Maybe we should all do the same.

It’s something that keeps me going in this.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Thinking About 9/11 And Our Past

What can we learn from this day? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As I start to write this blog, it’s about 8:42 in the morning EST. I think it was around this time that Professor Wheeler came to us as we were sitting in the gym area of our Bible College where morning worship took place as this place could seat the whole student body. Before the sermon, he said to pray for the people of New York. A plane had just hit one of the World Trade Center towers.

There was no panic or anything. I doubt people were thinking we were under attack. I sure wasn’t. I don’t even remember a discussion about it going on around me so we went and had our worship service. After that, the announcement came that the second tower had been hit by a plane. Now it was no longer an accident of some kind. This was an attack.

9/11 is a day where we always look to the past. Lately, this has been quite a contentious topic in America. We have scores of people who want to take down statues of our past and change street names related to our past. I haven’t said much about it, but I do not support such an action.

You see, 9/11 taught us something. It did show us a way that we were vulnerable and now we have improved on that to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Having suffering come into your life for a reason can be a tragedy. Not learning from it so that you repeat the mistake is even worse. If you do not learn from your mistakes, why should you not expect to repeat them?

We can’t erase 9/11. We can’t rewind the tape and undo it. Many of us have things from our recent history that we would love to go back and get to do them over again. It’s useless to wish for. You don’t have that ability. The best you can do is look at the event and see what you can learn from it.

It’s also useless for us to stay in the past and beat ourselves up over it. It happened. It would have been nice if it hadn’t, but it did happen. If it was for some sin we did, we repent and move on and agree to do better. No further punishment is needed for Jesus took it on for us. If it is for something that happened to us, we learn how to better prepare ourselves for next time. The past can be a great teacher for us.

So now we get to the craze today of removing statues. It would be nice if we could go back in time and remove the failures of our past from us, but we can’t. Slavery happened and there’s no changing that. No one today though is responsible for what happened in the past. The more we try to punish people today for what happened, the more we make ourselves live in the past and hold people responsible for what they did not do.

Our past can be ugly, but it cannot be erased. We can live like it didn’t happen, but it did. If we act like it didn’t happen, we are more prone to make the same mistakes. To hold up the statues is not to celebrate the past, but to acknowledge it. none of us should want to celebrate what happened.

When we remember 9/11, we don’t celebrate what happened. We remember it. Where we are the ones guilty of a sin, we have grace for ourselves and repent and move on and celebrate the grace of God. Where we have been wronged and put in danger, we learn from the past and say we won’t repeat it again.

Today, we’ll be thinking about 9/11. Part of our yearly ritual on this day is to watch the World Trade Center movie. We also ask that you thank God for the people you know in your life who are first responders. If you’re reading this and you’re a first responder, thank you for your service.

And if you’re reading this and you lost someone in 9/11, my sympathies go out to you. Nothing can ever really change this day. We can only say what was said long ago, that we will rebuild and live on. Never forget the past, but don’t let it be a place of permanent residency. This goes for all of us. May we all have grace and live our lives today. We don’t dare act like it didn’t happen. It happened and it mattered and the lives of those who died will never be deaths in vain.

In Christ,
Nick Peters