Welcome to "Tuesday Morning"—read it now; enjoy it tomorrow. It has a long "shelf-life."

 

As we all grow older, most of us remember less and less about more and more. I'm pretty sure I have forgotten more than I remember. My wife is sure of it.

 

The subject of this week's "Tuesday Morning" is "Remembering to Forget." It is attached below. Read it with interest. When you finish, perhaps you will agree with Sparky Anderson, former major league baseball manager, who once observed, "People who live in the past generally are afraid to compete in the present. I've got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There is no future in it." Well said, Sparky.

 

Tom Barnard

A Senior Encourager

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Remembering to Forget

Tom Barnard

 

everal years ago I received a questionnaire via the Internet that supposedly was designed to measure a person’s level of memory loss. I studied the questions and then answered seven of the ten questions “yes.” My answers triggered the following analysis: “You have a moderate problem with short-term memory loss.” I knew that before I completed the questionnaire. I don’t answer questionnaires like this any longer. But it was an interesting exercise. Here are the questions. How do you rate yourself?

 

• Do you occasionally walk into a room and then forget why you are there?
• Do you frequently misplace something of importance—glasses, keys, purse, or wallet?
• Do you occasionally have trouble remembering where you parked your car?
• Do you do things like close the garage door, drive off down the street, and then feel the need to return home to see if you actually closed the garage door?
• Do you often arrive at a destination, only to discover that you forgot to bring along an item essential to your trip—like money when you left home to go shopping?
• Do you occasionally have trouble remembering what you ate for dinner last night?
• Do you ever look up a telephone number—then forget it before you begin to dial it?
• Do you ever dial a phone number and then forget who it is you are calling?
• Do you tell people you will call them later, and then forget to call them later?
• Do you occasionally forget appointments that you made days or weeks earlier?
• We all possess the ability to remember. We also possess the ability to forget. God knew that if we couldn’t remember, we would always be tied to the immediate present. And if we couldn’t forget, we would always be tied to the past in such a way that we could never be free to be productive in the here and now. And our future would be very scary.

 

The Apostle Paul has provided a guideline for us to follow. It was part of his personal testimony. He said,

 

“Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13, 14)

 

Paul was right. If we are to live a productive life, we must do both—we must forget, and we must remember.

 

First, let’s look at some of the things we should forget:
 

• We must forget the ills done against us.
• We must forget the past sins that tend to condemn us.
• We must forget the tales told against us.
• We must forget the praises heaped upon us.

Second, let’s look at some of the things we should remember:
 

• We must remember the price that was paid for our salvation—the death of the Son of God.
• We must remember that we are saved by grace, not by our works.
• We must remember that we have been chosen by God to reach the unsaved.
• We must remember that there is a race to be run, and there is a destination to be reached.

Years ago the late W.T. Purkiser, editor of the Herald of Holiness, wrote an essay entitled, “Remembering to Forget.” Here is the wise counsel he proposed: “We can come to futility from either of two directions: by renouncing the past or by relying upon the past…Let us determine to make the past a steppingstone and not a stumbling block—a compass from which to chart the course and not a pier at which to dock the vessel.”