Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.
Psalm 25:6 (NIV)
Asking God to Remember
“You won’t remember me.”
She says it to the pastor at the doors with her keys already in her hand. He tells her that he does, and she lets him have it. Behind them two women are arguing about the coffee urn the way they argue about it every Sunday, and they have run that table together since before she was born. She started coming in the spring, between classes, and she leaves before anyone can place her.
Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. David is asking God to remember, and he asks for the opposite as well, that God not remember the sins of his youth and his rebellious ways. He asks for both at once, that God keep the mercy in view and leave the rest of it alone.
You ask God to do the remembering when you have run out of ways to remember yourself well. The student’s memory of herself is short. It reaches back a few years, it judges what it finds there, and on a bad night she can’t get to anything older than that.
David says the mercy and the love are from of old. They are older than the sins of his youth and older than anything he can remember of his own life, and he would rather be answered out of that than out of his own account of himself.
The student going out the doors wants a much smaller version of it from a man who will not manage it. She wants one person in that hall to keep hold of her name.
What would you ask him to remember, if you had one sentence and he was waiting for it?
A Prayer to Remember
Thank you for the mercy that was old before I got here. I didn’t earn any of it and I wasn’t watching when most of it arrived. Tonight I remember myself badly and in detail. Do the remembering instead of me.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
