My local shopping centre sent me a note confirming my joining their community by downloading their app. In the followup email, I found one of my benefits in joining was that I could:
"Check your parking time and set a 30 minute reminder"
What a good feature. Don't you hate it when you get caught one-minute late and have to pay an extra $4 or whatever they assess? In fact reminders like this are useful in many arenas.
Think about the oil light on your car. To some, it's an annoying little alarm that blinks too often or SHOUTS as a red light while you are trying to drive your normal routes. They say we are supposed to change our batteries on our household smoke alarms when the clocks either spring forward or fall back. And if you don't perform that changeover, those little alarms make some serious alarming beeps until we both notice and respond to their reminder.
Reminders can be welcomed or rejected, but they exist for us in all our lives. And if we get them right, we will be right. The oil alert will save the engine. The smoke alarm will keep us safe.
Each of these reminders are about future events. But today I'm also thinking about reminders of the past. That is, things or calendar circles that trigger memories of days gone by. For some, it's that old sweater in the closet that you used to wear when you dated your high-school sweetheart. And you still fit in it. For some it's the memory while driving past the golf course where you hit that eagle on the par-5 13th.
Applewatch has features for memory's sake, like anniversaries and birthdays. Don't forget to remember!
The God of the Bible wants us to remember things also. He has done some significant things in the life and story of the Jewish people, like making us from one man (Abraham) and delivering us from slavery under Moses in the Exodus account. Providing for 3 million wilderness wanderers is no small feat for an army of chefs, but God did this for 4 decades without any help.
That deliverance is celebrated every year by Jewish people in the holiday named Passover. We eat unleavened bread, spiced with horseradish, and remember the House of Bondage in which we suffered for hundreds of years. Some eat lamb, and most have a lamb shankbone to remind us that we were spared not because we were Jews alone, but by the blood of lambs applied to the doorposts of our homes in Goshen. That perpetual memory is a reminder that God is alive and well, and he saves to the uttermost those who put their trust in him.
Have you done that?
Passover starts this year on 27 March and lasts for 8 days. As Passover finishes in 2021, the holiday of Easter will take place. What is Easter you ask? It's the day on the Christian calendar remembering the death, burial and especially the resurrection of a Jew named Yeshua. According to the story, his death was a crucifixion on a Roman gallows called a 'cross.' The burial near the Mt of Olives in Jerusalem was so severe that a Roman leader demanded his people guard the tomb securely and even sealed the overlaying rock. Then on what has become known as Easter, the Jewish man rose from the dead, and afterwards appeared to 500 Jews for 6 weeks.
Does that remind you of someone?
In English they call him Jesus. In Hebrew Yeshua. His birth in Bethlehem brought this Jew into the world, and the world has never been the same ever since. The Bible is full of his memory and his prestige.
Is Yeshua in your world yet?
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