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March 1, 2009
Psalm 25: 1-10; Genesis 9: 8-17

More light, more truth, is breaking from your Word.
More light, more truth, Holy Spirit,
help us hear what needs to be heard.
(from a hymn by Christopher Grundy)

I’d invite you to listen to a little bit of this song:

Remember Your mercies, O Lord.
Remember Your mercies, O Lord.
Remember Your mercies, Remember Your mercies,
Remember Your mercies, O Lord.

Remember Your compassion, O Lord,
And Your kindness are from of old.
Please forget my sins and frailties,
In Your kindness, remember me,
Because of Your goodness, O Lord.

Remember Your mercies, O Lord.
Remember Your mercies, O Lord.
Remember Your mercies, Remember Your mercies,
Remember Your mercies, O Lord.

So does the singer think that God will forget her?

Did the writer of Psalm 25, which inspired this song, think that God has a short memory?

The idea of a forgetful God seems to have some pretty good origins. In the story of Noah and the flood, the writer puts these words in the mouth of God:  “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between you and me and every living creature of all flesh.”  And just in case the reader has a short memory, God says it again: “When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant.”


OK, and just what are we to do with a God who forgets?

It seems kind of odd for the psalm writer to start off saying, “To you, O God, I lift up my soul, O my God, in you I trust,” and then have to worry about God forgetting us.  

Of course, the psalm writer hopes that God will forget some things – “Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions.”  Now those are good things to forget. But don’t forget about your promise of mercy, O God. Forget the bad stuff and remember me.

So do we think that God will forget us?

The God in the story of Noah who promised never again to flood the earth seems at odds with all the floods and other natural disasters that still destroy life on our planet. Has God forgotten the promise?

I suspect there have been times in life for many of us that we were not so sure God remembered who we were.  God felt distant, maybe non-existent. If God cared about us, after all, surely we’d know.

And since life was melting down all around us, just where exactly was the God? Had God forgotten us? And if God is all-knowing, all-powerful, how could God forget us?

Remember your mercies, O Lord.  Remember your kindness and compassion are from of old. Remember your mercies, O Lord.


Maybe the writer of the psalm, maybe the writer of Genesis, was describing God in the only way they could image – as a sort of super human being. They know how we can forget things, even important things, even sometimes caring about the people we love. So we worry that God we create in our image might be forgetful of our needs.

This concern about God’s memory is not limited to Genesis and the Psalms.  Over and over, people in the Bible worry that God has forgotten about them. That’s why it’s helpful that in the book of the prophet Isaiah, the writer puts some much more reassuring words in the mouth of God after the people complain that God has forgotten them:

“Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will never forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”

The God who promised never again to flood the earth wasn’t promising an end to natural disasters. This God was saying that natural disasters are not a result of divine displeasure. No matter what happens, God will remember that we are here and that we need to know that God is with us, not against us. God is our ally in the midst of trouble, not our enemy.

I think this issue of whether or not God forgets us really has a lot more to do with whether we “forget” God. It’s not that we want to forget God. It’s just that at times, the whole notion of God can be pretty hard to get our heads around. And when life’s demands start pressing in, we feel the pressure of those demands a lot more than we feel God’s presence.

That’s one reason why Lent is such a handy season. It creates a space for us, it gives us an opportunity to focus once again on God’s presence in our lives.  

Lent can be a time when we choose to beat ourselves up for our shortcomings, but I don’t think that’s particularly useful. Yes, we should acknowledge that we all have short-comings; yes, we should remember that we are not perfect; yes, we should realize that too often we think first about ourselves.  But acknowledging those things is way different than dwelling on them.

What I like to focus on during Lent is getting my spirit back in touch with God’s spirit.  It’s a time when I can find a way to remember God’s mercies and to remember that God can get past my sins and frailties probably even easier than I can.  And as I remember God’s love for me, then maybe I can find a way to extend that love to some of those around me.

We’ll be hearing a lot from the Psalms over the next several Sundays, those ancient poetic songs that are part of the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. They are the thread that will run through our time together this Lent.  

We began here on Ash Wednesday – the first day of Lent – with Psalm 51, asking God for mercy and asking that God help us create in ourselves a clean heart, in other words, to make a fresh start in our relationship with God.

Today, the psalm talks about God’s mercy and asks God to make known God’s ways, to teach us God’s paths of love and faithfulness so we can walk those paths in our lives. The footsteps you see beginning to move around the sanctuary are reminder of our journey on those paths.

Next week, we’ll hear part of the 22nd psalm, a psalm that starts out in deep despair and ends with a sense that God has heard the psalm writer’s cry for help.


We’ll sing of the glory of God’s creation, we’ll give thanks to God for a love that endures forever and then as we enter the final week of Lent, we’ll begin by once again joining the psalm writer in proclaiming our trust for God in the midst of distress.

It’s an unusual way to observe Lent, to let the Psalms carry us through our Sunday worship this season. But the Book of Psalms has so much to offer us. These are the unvarnished prayers that have sustained our Jewish and our Christian ancestors. These are the prayers that Jesus himself prayed. Although they are often written in the singular voice, they are primarily prayers that were recited by the community, conveying the wide range of emotions in life – joy and fear, love and hatred, anger and confusion, despair and vindication.

They tell us that wherever we are emotionally, God is there with us. We may worry that God has forgotten us, we may think that the idea of mercy has slipped out of God’s mind, but in the end, these prayers remind us that God is there with us.

So remember your mercies, O Lord. Be with us along the way this season of Lent. Help us to remember you, to remember each other.  Remember your mercies, O Lord.