THE CHILDREN'S MEMORIES

The Scriptures speak many more times of remembering than of forgetting and, although nobody knows just how memory works, everyone knows how important it is. In this regard there are two matters of special interest to us as believers.

One is that, because of the shed blood of Jesus, our sins will be remembered no more by a just God. He may sometimes allow us to remember them for some wise reason, but not to fear judgment for them. How thankful we are that it is not said that He will forget them, which would be weakness! But He sees them as not being ours because our Saviour has borne them for us. This is the strength of divine love.

The other thing is that Jesus, who suffered for our sins, has asked us to break bread in remembrance of Him. The Lord's supper was at the first for the apostles but soon there were thousands of persons breaking bread. Later, Paul reminded the saints at Corinth that the Lord Jesus had repeated from heaven His desire to be remembered in this way. In his epistle Paul called the children "holy" - or 'set apart for God' - and they would surely be eager to ask to have their part in this privilege, not just by memory but from their hearts.

It is said of Timothy that from a child he had known "the sacred letters". The use of these words must mean that he had not only heard the Scriptures but had read them for himself and remembered them. The first blessing in the last book of the Bible is to those who read; we find that this holds good for the whole of God's word. When older, Timothy was told by Paul to give himself to reading. The word means to read aloud to other persons who could not do so for themselves. But to learn the Scriptures 'by heart' is also very important because then the Holy Spirit can guide us by bringing God's word to our memory.

Many hundreds of years ago there were some Christians called 'the Vaudois' who were so persecuted that they had to live in caves and dens of the mountains. But an enemy of theirs admitted distinctly that some of these poor people knew the whole of the New Testament. Do they shame you into learning more?

J.C.Evershed