Not Forgotten

How's your memory? Do you have filing cabinets full of ready facts and clear childhood memories in your brain? Or, like me, are you trying to remember what you had for dinner last night? (Popcorn?...No. I feel like we went out somewhere... Mexican! We had Mexican!)

I forget, it seems, more than I remember. Names, appointments, dates. My baby in the nursery at church. (Seriously, every Sunday. I will get sidetracked and suddenly yell out, "Morgan!" and race to retrieve him from the toddler room.)

Sometimes I wish I was an elephant. What do they say about elephants? They never....

Hmm...I forget.

I am not just a forgetter. Sometimes I'm the very thing that's forgotten. Left off the invite list. Left behind by a friend. Not noticed in the crowd. Just as we humans tend to forget things, sometimes we forget each other. 

I've been forgotten.

But never by God:

I, Peter, am an apostle on assignment by Jesus, the Messiah,

writing to exiles scattered to the four winds.

Not one missing, not one forgotten.

God the Father has his eye on each of you.

1 Peter 1:1-2

Sometimes it feels like we're forgotten by Him. Sometimes we wait...and wait.

Noah waited in a flood, in a boat filled with loved ones and livestock. As he witnessed the literal destruction of the world around him surely he feared and felt lonely. He waited for at least 200 days in that boat.  But then:

"God remembered Noah." (Genesis 8:1)

When God remembers, it doesn't mean that He has forgotten.  

It means He's ready to act on your behalf. It means the wait is over.

You, beloved, are not forgotten. God the Father has His eye on you, just as He had His eye on Noah in that boat.

Surely there were plenty of times when Noah wished the rain would stop, wished the waters to recede. But God's plans weren't Noah's plans. Noah had to wait to be remembered, even when he felt forgotten.

Noah's faith was well placed. God "sent a wind over the earth and the waters receded (Genesis 8:1)."

There, in your boat, with your flood waters rising around you - you are seen. God has His eye on you! You are not missing.

And just as God remembered Noah, He will remember you, too:

You never saw Him, yet you love Him.

You still don't see, yet you trust Him -

with laughter and singing.

Because you kept on believing, 

you'll get what you're looking forward to:

total salvation.

1 Peter 1:8-9

Friend, you are not forgotten.

No matter what is happening now in your boat that floats on the dark, scary waters - there is joy ahead (1 Peter 1:6):

Sweet moments, blessed reassurance, a good future. Total salvation.

This is a promise that even I can't forget.  

I will remember that I am not forgotten.

Lord, may it be so.