A Lesson in Re-Membering
By Brita Crouse
“Yet this I
call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are
not consumed, for His compassions never fail.”
Lamentations 3:21-22 (NIV)
It’s a cold November morning. The
sun has yet to make an appearance and all signs of life are quiet except for
the few, like me, out on the road. I drive faster than I should, but I’m
realizing how precious time is. I arrive and walk into a somber house, finding
family members sleeping, curled up closely to a great man in his final moments.
So I assume the role of watchman and
I savor the stillness and let them rest. I write and I try to be thankful. I
pause and watch him, monitor his breathing - - in and out and in and…out and
in and out - - acknowledging he is now only a sliver of who I know him to
be. I write until my ink-stained hand is sore and my eyes grow tired. I finish
with: I am thankful for the ability to hold onto hope. And the heaviness
of it all weighs on me. So I switch rooms, blackest coffee in hand, and open
the Word, craving its healing.
“I am the [wo]man who has seen
affliction…He pierced my heart…He has filled me with bitter herbs…My soul is
downcast within me.” [1]
The words of the lamenter
reverberate within.
“Yet this I call to mind and
therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not
consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is
Your
faithfulness.” [2, emphasis added]
I have hope?
God’s breathed Word says so.
“This fallen world never stops
dis-membering who we are. We’re all breaking a bit more every day…And there,
even as we ache, is the gentle whisper of God. With the quiet urging to give
thanks anyways…But why in the world give thanks?…Because we remember how He
blesses, loves us, when we recollect His goodness to us, we heal - - we
re-member. In the remembering to give thanks, our broken places are re-membered
- - made whole. When we re-member all His blessings, we re-member all our
fractures, and in giving thanks in the assembly it’s our very souls that
re-assemble.” [3]
Sometimes it hurts and life
dis-members us, breaks us down.
But there is joy in giving thanks,
in having hope… in the re-membering.
GOING DEEPER:
1.
How are you re-membering and giving thanks despite your circumstances?
FURTHER READING:
Brita is currently working toward
her Master’s in Counseling at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She has
called Oakwood her home church for the past seventeen years.
[1] Lamentations 3:1, 13, 15, 20
[2] Lamentations 3:21-23
[3] Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts, (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2011) 172.
