{"id":3274,"date":"2005-10-09T20:08:35","date_gmt":"2005-10-10T01:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2005\/10\/09\/the-grace-of-forgetfulness\/"},"modified":"2022-03-11T13:32:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T19:32:31","slug":"the-grace-of-forgetfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2005\/10\/09\/the-grace-of-forgetfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grace of Forgetfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind<\/strong> and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n

Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you google the term “improving memory,” you get 129,000 or so results. If you search for “improving forgetfulness,” you’ll see 41 pages, none of which actually offer any techniques for getting better at forgetting. One conclusion we may draw from this is that we place value on being able to remember the details of our lives, and that the ability to forget is not something we should seek to enhance.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has desperately searched high and low for misplaced car keys wouldn’t disagree, and I would never attempt to argue that forgetfulness is more useful in everyday life than the ability to remember important details. But it took a sermon from a semi-retired preacher in a small Baptist church this morning to give me a different perspective: God’s grace is often poured out on us via the ability to forget.<\/p>\n

To a large extent, what we are today is defined by what we remember about yesterday, or the collective yesterdays that comprise our lives. The emotions triggered by those memories are just as important as the intellectual lessons we assimilate from them. Most of us have memories that we classify as “good” and “bad” and the extent to which the “good” ones outweigh the “bad” ones, the more likely we are to find life more pleasant…less stressful…more fulfilling. But what happens when the bad memories outweigh the good ones? Can we tilt that scale back the other way?<\/p>\n

The apostle Paul seems to think so. In the verse quoted above, from his letter to the church at Philippi, he seems to have made a conscious decision to forget what’s happened in his life up until now…and he had a lot of bad things to forget, not only regretful actions he took, but things that were done to him. Yet he put them behind him — forgot them…made them irrelevant to his attitude and outlook — and focused on what lay ahead.<\/p>\n

How did he manage to do that? After all, letting go of past hurts and shames is possibly the most difficult thing humans can do. No matter how often we speak of “forgiving and forgetting,” we are usually much more successful at doing the former than the latter. In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible to forget those things that drag us backwards, in and of ourselves. I believe that it’s only through the grace of God that we can truly forget, and in forgetting, move ahead to the things He has in store for us.<\/p>\n

Now, I can’t prove this premise with a specific Scriptural citation, but there are plenty of references to God’s power and desire to strengthen us in our areas of weakness if we’ll simply ask Him. So, if memories of wrongs done to you or of your own failures are keeping you from having joy in your everyday life, try asking God to give you the gift of forgetfulness. Somewhere along the line, He’ll require you to forgive the others, and perhaps even forgive yourself, but the God who desires all good things for His children and whose purposes are redemptive will be faithful to grant you that gift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever considered that one of the manifestations of God’s grace is the ability to forget?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8570,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3274\/revisions\/8570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}