Memory is powerful. Being remembered or being forgotten has a profound effect on people. Ever forget a loved one’s birthday or your spouse’s anniversary? There’s consequences to forgetfulness. Or the pain experienced when a loved one begins to lose memory? Forgetfulness is hard. There are also times where we choose to try and forget something, an act of self-preservation or a coping strategy. The human condition is full of things we wish we could remember and don’t and experiences we wish we could forget and can’t. The forgetfulness of Israel is painful all around. It’s painful for us as readers to see it again and again and again in the book of Judges. The people suffer, a judge rises up, the people are rescued, and then once the judge dies they forget the Lord all over again. It also grieves God. Varying levels of lament, pain, sadness, anger and wrath are expressed throughout the Old Testament about the people’s forgetfulness. And of course, it’s painful for the people themselves. Why can’t they just remember the right things and remember God and keep the Law? Yet they stubbornly refuse to forget how to worship the Baals. We might use the Old Testament to hold up the mirror and ask ourselves how good our memory is for all that God has done for us, being careful not to forget it. God remembers the double-edged sword of the promises made in the law: remember me and I’ll remember you. But forget me, says the Lord, and things won’t go so well. This is the descriptive pattern of judges. Not prescriptive, this isn’t fun for God! But Judges describes a cycle of forgetting, crying out, the Lord relenting and delivering, and the people forgetting again. How does this book help us? As we engage the season of Lent, we are reminded just like the Israelites in the days of the judges that we need a more permanent solution than one judge at a time. We don’t just need a judge, who will be here today and gone tomorrow. We need THE Judge, who can sit at the hand of God the Father Almighty, forever and ever, amen. We need Jesus. In the book of Judges and this season of Lent, there is a thirst for an eternal deliverer that comes into focus. Only through this final, perfect Judge (we call him Jesus) can we get to the one good type of forgetfulness: God’s selective amnesia. “I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:7-13 quoting Jeremiah 31:31-34). God’s going to forget our sin, with a selective amnesia that we call salvation. It is the one time that God “forgets” and it is truly good. Yet God isn’t actually forgetting, but he is forgiving. Painful memories must be dealt with, just as sin must be dealt with. Jesus died for our sins and left them dead in the empty grave when he rose again. Our sins were dealt with on earth so they could be forgotten in heaven. Lent is a time to practice remembering what Jesus has already done so that we can deal with and be free of our pain, even now. Remember and forget rightly, for memory is powerful. - Pastor Steven