Sometimes You Have to Growl a Little.
- Corey Bjertness
- Sep 22
- 2 min read
In our family, we have a problem brewing. I envision a day when it is time to distribute the baby pictures. With Catherine, our oldest, it will be easy. We'll carry all the boxes out to her van, and then we will stand in the driveway and say, "Well, Catherine, you will just have to get the rest on the next trip."
However, when Abigail and Benjamin (our middle children) get their pictures, we are going to have some explaining to do." First of all, "Why do all my pictures fit into one box?" And secondly, "How come every picture ever taken of me includes my brother and sister?"
When it comes to Josiah, we are in big trouble. It will probably go like this. "Son, I tell you what, we'll mail that picture when we find it. It has to be around here somewhere." By the time number four came around, we did not have enough gas in the engines to remember to remember.
The common denominator of all our relationships is simply this: We remember. We remember, so we do not take for granted the blessings of life. Remembrance is the bedrock of relationships. Remembering becomes of utmost importance. In friendship, courtship, marriage, or the Lordship of Jesus Christ, remembering holds us together. In both life and death, it is remembering that carries us. Nobody talks about the necessity of remembering better than the psalmist in Psalm One.
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers, but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law, they meditate day and night.
The words "remember and do not forget" are used nearly two hundred times in the Bible. Yet, I have chosen a text about remembering from a passage that doesn't even contain the word' remember. ' This is why. The Hebrew word for meditate in this passage means to remember with a passion. Let me give you a picture that explains. In Isaiah 31:4, it says, "This is what the LORD says to me: 'As a lion growls, a great lion over his prey-- and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against him, he is not frightened…" The Hebrew word for meditate and the growls over is the same.
Meditate = Growl Over.
Just as the lion stands over its prey and growls, we are to stand over the things of God.
The great pastor and theologian TF Gullickson knew the importance of "growling" over things well. In his book, In the Face of the West Wind, he writes this about his wife.
Beside me, as we lived among those westward-facing folks, was one who long ago put a hand in mine to say: "Yes, I will walk with you, my lad; yes, I will walk with you." And she did.
To her, among those faces from the past, I need only whisper, "I remember."
Don't forget to remember.
Have a Great Week!
