I’ll be honest, I do NOT look forward to getting older! Even at my age, my body is starting to feel the results of the things I did in my “younger” years, and I forget things all the time. Retirement is going to be miserable if this is any indication! However, I’m not the only one to forget things. 

A preacher went to visit an older man in his community and said to him, “Harold, I think it’s time you started thinking about the hereafter.” The man replied, “Funny you should mention it, preacher. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately!” The preacher, excited at this opportunity, said, “Well, tell me, Harold, what have you been thinking?” With missing a beat, the man responded, “Well at least a couple of times a day, I walk into a room and think, ‘What am I here after?’” 

As comedic as forgetfulness can be at times, at other times, it is downright tragic. We’ve heard the stories of someone who forgot to turn off the stove, or who forgot that their child was in the car on a hot day. None of these however, carries as much weight as forgetting God.         

In Exodus 32, Moses has gone up to meet with God. This meeting carries great significance for their future as God will tangibly cement his covenant with them. However, they grow impatient in waiting for Moses and decide that they ought to have a physical representation of God to worship. After all, all the nations around them have something to look at and worship. How quickly they have forgotten the second commandment from Exodus 20, “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image…”            

Similarly, Peter was not far removed from his own personal interaction with Jesus, when, in Matthew 26, he denies having a personal relationship with Christ, or even knowing him. Just a few verses earlier, in verse 34, Jesus TOLD Peter that he would deny him, and Peter emphatically disagreed. Yet, how forgetful he was, and just as Jesus prophesied, Peter did in fact deny Christ three times that very night.            

It’s easy to look at them and think about how they were so foolish to forget God, but don’t we do the same thing all the time? Maybe today you didn’t go to the length of making a golden calf or denying Christ, but have you lived as if God didn’t exist? Have you done things, knowing that no one will see, but forgetting God’s omnipresence and omniscience? Have you neglected your time in the Word and in prayer? Have you set priorities that would take away your focus from Him?            

If we are honest, we all neglect the truths of Proverbs 8:33-35, “Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.”           

There ought to be a daily eagerness in each one of us that drives us back to God each and every day, and many times each day. If we were to look at your life over the past week, have you forgotten God?