“Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number.” Jeremiah 2:32
Forgetting God
When I got married in the early 1980’s, I still had a bit of the “flower child” in me. I wanted a wreath of flowers in my hair, and a simple long, white dress (not a wedding gown) embellished with just a bit of peach ribbon. Nothing silky, nothing flowing, nothing trailing behind. I chose the pattern, and my mother and grandmother created the dress I saw in my mind. It suited me. It spoke of who I was. It was exactly what I wanted.
Can you imagine, then, if on my wedding day, I forgot to wear it? What if that day came and I failed to remember that I had this specially-made dress to wear, and I just put on my usual jeans and t-shirt? “Can a bride forget her attire?”
I doubt this has ever happened to anyone. If I had shown up at my wedding wearing anything less than that dress so lovingly made for me, my mother would have dismissed me at once to go get it and put it on. It would be impossible to forget the dress. So much time had been spent on it, so much love had gone into making it perfect, so much attention to detail had been given—and, of course, the day was so significant—that to forget the dress would be an absurdity.
This is what God is saying in today’s verse. Every day of our lives, we remember lesser things. But we sometimes forget God.
When I was a new believer, I was caught up in the lifestyle of being what was called then a “Jesus freak.” That term may be a bit derogatory, but our lives were immersed in a new culture. For me, that’s all it was: a new identity with new friends and a new place to spend my time (church) and new, wholesome activities to be engaged in (sing-alongs with Christian lyrics, accompanied by guitar-strummers and bongo-thumpers, around the beach campfires). I forgot that God was the center. It took a long time to get to know Him and to remember Him every day.
God has written Himself into our lives. He should be central. All we do, say, and think should be because of Him. “In Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We live because He breathes His breath into us. We are saved by His grace. We are indwelt by His Spirit because He wants us to have a Guide and Teacher (Himself).
In Jeremiah 2:2, God says, “I remember you.” Do we remember Him? “Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who meditate on His name” (Malachi 3:16).
“Lord God, may we remember You every day, all day, and think of You when we retire at night. May our lives be centered on You forever. Amen.”
Amen!
Interesting.. My husband and I were involved with the street ministry of the Jesus people but back in the time frame of when Chuck Smith was getting his ministry going. By the 80’s, we had become a more living room oriented gathering and the people we were a part of had married and were raising families.. We had rented churches a couple times because people were hanging in windows to hear the Gospel and filling floor space in our home, but each time there was a falling away. I hadn’t ever thought of ‘Jesus people’ as a derogatory phrase, but main stream denominations wanted everyone to ‘look more like them’, so we never ‘joined up’. Those days were so lively and full of the Lord, it leaves a lot of today’s churches ‘wanting’. Good times!
Thank you for this challenge to give God priority and preeminence. Let us remember the greater things.
Just love the sentence you wrote: ” God has written himself into our lives.” That is profound and worth meditating on. We can all look at our own story to see how uniquely God has written Himself into our tale. Each of us have a God romance or God adventure or a God mystery or a God thriller to take part in. God wants to star in our story, but we can be great supporting actors who help bring that story to a phenomenal close.when God gets to star, there’s an amazing sequel called “Eternal Life”. It plays forever in heaven.!