Someone has wisely said that memories are the treasures that you never want to lose. Sadly, many Americans lose those treasures. “About 1 in 9 people (10.8%) age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s dementia. The percentage of people with Alzheimer’s dementia increases with age: 5.0% of people age 65 to 74, 13.1% of people age 75 to 84, and 33.3% of people age 85 and older have Alzheimer’s dementia.”1
Today is National Memory Day. The day was instituted to highlight the importance of memory and to draw awareness to those who suffer from the loss of memory.
There are three functions to memory: the acquiring of information, the ability to retain that information, and the ability to recall that information when necessary. As memories are processed in the brain, they fall into four main categories:
Sensory – these memories are created by the senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, and feeling. We might say that a certain smell triggered a memory or a sound took us back to a moment in the past. That’s the sensory function.
Short–term – they aren’t kidding when they call this short-term. Some students rely on this; however, a short-term memory only lasts for 30 seconds. Last minute cramming for an exam isn’t that helpful, is it?
Long-term – this function helps us recall birthdates, anniversaries, and things we’ve learned more than 30 seconds ago. Every student needs a good long-term memory to pass those tests.
Working – this memory function makes it possible for us to do the normal, repetitive tasks of the day.2
When a person starts to have issues with their memory, one or more of these functions can be affected.
Now, don’t panic. We all have foggy-memory syndrome from time to time. We forget where we put our glasses, even though they are on top of our heads. We call our wife, asking her to call our cell phone because we can’t find it – even though we are calling from our cell. We lose our car keys. And we find them in the last place we would have looked – which is actually a ridiculous thing to say. Everything we find is in the last place we looked. Why would we keep looking after we found them?
And as we get older, the memory isn’t what it used to be. Again, this is very normal. However, for the 10.8% of our population, memory loss is anything but normal and its effects on the individual as well as the caregivers can be devastating.
While memory loss is sad, there is one serious lapse in memory that happens to every Christian which is even worse. We forget God. It’s not an actual memory loss. It is a practical memory loss. Allow Jonah to illustrate.
In Jonah 1, God tells Jonah to go and preach to the people of Ninevah. Jonah didn’t want to do this, so he hopped a ship going the opposite direction to Tarshish. Running from God, he tries his best to push God from his thoughts. While sound asleep in the ship, a storm brews that frightens the experienced mariners. Jonah kept on sleeping until Jonah 1:6. “So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”
Jonah fesses up to what he has done and in a moment of integrity, he tells the sailors to throw him overboard and the storm will calm. Even after other attempts were made to navigate the storm, the crew of the ship gave Jonah the old heave-ho! When Jonah splashes into the water, the storm subsided immediately and a great fish prepared by God for this moment swallowed Jonah whole.
Jonah 2:1 begins with Jonah having an epiphanic moment. “Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish’s belly.” What took him so long to have this prayer meeting? Why don’t we read about this earlier? Jonah 2:7 has the answer. “When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.”
To remember means just that – to recall, call to mind, to be brought to remembrance, be thought of, be brought to mind. When Jonah says that he remembered, it implies that he had forgotten in the sense that he had pushed God far from His thinking. Out of sight, out of mind, and Jonah evidently thought he was free to disobey the Lord and go his own direction.
Are you suffering from spiritual memory loss? Are you living and acting like there’s not a God to whom you must answer? Let this devotional jog your memory before it’s too late!
1https://www.alz.org/media/Documents/alzheimers-facts-and-figures.pdf
2https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-memory-day-march-21
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