Daily Devotions
God's Selective Memory
Reading for August 26th: Jeremiah 49-50
In those days and in that time, declares the Lord, iniquity shall be sought in Israel, and there shall be none, and sin in Judah, and none shall be found, for I will pardon those whom I leave as a remnant.
Jeremiah 50:20
Did you know that God has a selective memory?
He does.
We know that when God forgives he forgets. It's not that God literally doesn't remember what we have done; he simply chooses to accept us as if we had done nothing wrong (Jer 31:34).
But there are some things he doesn't forget: "God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name..." (Hebrews 6:10) This too is by God's choice. He chooses to remember the good we have done.
God chooses to remember what he wants to remember. He wants to remember the good we do while forgetting the bad.
We tend to do the opposite. We harbor resentment and feed the bitterness in our soul over wrongs committed against us, even when we say we have forgiven those things. We also like to conveniently forget the good done for us by those who are our enemies.
God's example should provoke us all to think more selflessly as we all choose what we will remember and forget about others.
Thank you, God, for erasing our sins from your memory! Help us to do the same for others. Help us to focus rather on the good in others.
