Please welcome our friend and Pastor of Family Ministries, Dr. Aaron Walp, today at This Temporary Home. I know his teaching will encourage you to love God with all your mind. Thank you Dr. Walp for being our guest.
Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us. ~Oscar Wilde
I have heard it said that you are a compilation of your collective memories. That is, due to your unique life experience you are who you are. For me, I never enter an ocean, lake, or bathtub without considering the remote possibility that Jaws may be in there waiting on me. The smell of hay triggers thoughts of hard work and great friends, as we spent weeks filling two barns with hay for the oncoming winter. The colors of fall propel my mind to moments of anticipation for the upcoming hunting season. And several large novels could not contain the memories of my life.
It is said, that no culture is more consumed with memories than the Jewish people. For example, they have a tradition of reciting specific scripture verses called the Shema. It is three texts from two books of the Torah. The first section is from the book of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and is a command to love God and teach this love to one’s children. The other passages, Deuteronomy 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41 address the need to obey God’s commands and remember them daily. The faithful recite these passages once in the morning and once at night, and if they have children, they will involve them in the prayer.
In essence, the chosen nation is both remembering as well as making memories for themselves and their children. The idea is that while experiencing times of need, abundance (yes, especially in good times), anger, and temptation, the child’s memories of what God has said will be what they use to make their decision on how to respond. If all one has to recall is humanistic answers, they will likely fail the test set before them, the daily test of life.
God desires His creation to love Him in return for the love He has shown and shows us. He has created a world with such precision that modern science cannot even begin to grasp its complexity. He has built in incomprehensible beauty, intellectual depth, and inconceivable astrological features that boggle and confound the greatest of minds. He is aware of life’s difficulties, unfathomable heartache, miserable moments, and the decisive pull of our sinful heart to run from Him. And it is because of this that He lovingly asks us to make memories that are set apart from this dead world filled with difficult days. He wants His children to be able to focus on things which only exist in the Savior, Jesus Christ. That is, things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, or worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8). Nothing in this world can fulfill this incessant desire for completeness but the word of God. And it is one’s memory of His word through reading, studying, and memorizing it daily that one reaches this pinnacle.
For more information about Aaron Walp, D. Min., please check out his blog at http://walpapologeticrants.blogspot.com/ or find him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/
