On Why We Must Remember

Before Ann Voskamp and her Ten Thousand Gifts there was Suvi Mari.

I remember her.  Full of life and laughter, her personality drew a crowd and her story was thick and rich, but not without tears.   She carried around a fat little notebook that summer.  She called it her Happy Book and she scribbled down the things in life that brought joy, warranted laughter and elicited gratitude.  Deep and meaningful, trite and insignificant and every thing that fell between...it was all in her Happy Book.

Like I said, she was a magnetic sort, and those of us drawn to her could not help but see the value in this recording of happy.  We coveted her joy and thus adopted her method.  We bought our own fat little notebooks and penned our own stories that summer...random lists of the gifts which brought happy to our own hearts.

That summer.  1995.  Twenty three years ago now.  Some might call that a lifetime.

It pains me to admit it but all those years later my Happy Book book is only three quarters full and to be honest the regular entries stop somewhere around 2006 - the final ones on the list speak of baby "flutterings," prenatal appointments and new seasons.

Seasons full of happy.  

But how I love to leaf through the now yellowing pages of that book.  Entries in pencil have succumbed to fading and a few pages threaten to fall out.  In the times I sit with it and take a walk through my past - through my happy - through all the blessings big and small that my God has lavished upon me, the seconds turn to minutes and minutes could turn to hours and I am caught up in the wonder of all these good and perfect gifts from above coming down from the Father of Lights who does not change like shifting shadows.

Page after page.

Some of the elicited memories are as familiar and fresh as yesterday and some seem like a story belonging to a stranger.  I shake my head at the teenage girl fumbling through life and the twenty something with priorities to which this 40something year old mother of 4 can hardly relate.  I laugh in the funny moments, rejoice in the mountain top experiences and sit in awe of the miracles done on my behalf.  And I am deeply moved in gratitude for 23 years of gifts.  It's a walk through a life full of joy.  A detailed account of His part in my story.  And I see it so clearly:

It really is HIS story, isn't it?

I remember.  Thanksgiving levels my stature once again and I am on my knees - even my face - because of His kindness.

And I realize that before Suvi Mari there was David.

The harp playing psalmist, the youngest yet anointed, the shepherd turned king.  The man after God's own heart.

And his heart?  Well, I think he believed in happy books too.  He poured it out through the Psalms and recounted the gifts given, the miracles done, the battles won.

He remembered.

His spirit failed him, his flesh weakened, his enemies advanced, and his answer in the face of it?

To remember.

The heavens created, foundations laid, his own flesh knit together, a people chosen, a love unfailing, rest assured, Egypt humbled, mercy awarded, waters parted, land promised, victory delivered, prayers heard, refuge offered, wisdom granted...

David's list of happy goes on and on.  It's all there.  The gifts that assured Him of the existence of the Giver.  He penned them all.

That which brought him joy, that which strengthened his heart, that which buoyed his faith in His Rock, his fortress, his deliver, his God.

He remembered.  And in remembering, he lived out his life's purpose...the purpose of each of us, really...to bring glory to the Creator.  To point to the Giver.

The thing is, I need the Anns, the Suvi Maris and the Davids.  I need the kind reminder to remember.

Because I'm prone to forget. 

Maybe we all are?  Is that the weak thread in this tapestry of humanity...that we tend to forget?

 I can't afford to forget.  I wonder if any of us can.

Because if He is the author of it all...the true giver of every good and perfect gift...the Elohim-Creator and the El Elyon-God Most High, and if all things truly are created by Him and through Him and FOR HIM...then the human condition of forgetting or misplacing our thanksgiving is no minor offence.  It is usurpation to the core.  Glory-thieving so to speak.  Rebellion plain and simple.

I need the reminder, because it's my nature to forget.  It's my nature to take for granted, to get so caught up in the happy itself that I forget something so simple, yet so profound...

It's not about me.  Strangely enough, all that happy is not even about me.  Not even about the gifts themselves.  If I'm paying attention, if I'm remembering to remember, I see it clearly.  All of it points to something, someone far greater.

The Giver Himself.

David knew that, and Suvi knew that and Ann knows that too.

"Come thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace.  Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise."