Forgetting

 Ive always had a really poor memory.  I cant remember much about my childhood - have to look up dates when significant things happened - draw a blank on birthdays and the like. But recently Ive met someone who has suffered a traumatic brain injury and has no ability to recall any memory post injury. He lives his life by writing everything in computer files which he then consults at regular intervals. Every relationship is catalogued because if he were to meet you today and you were to tell him what you did for work or if you were married with kids or where you lived he wouldn't necessarily remember those things tomorrow.

Meeting him has made me think a lot about the way our minds work and how much we take our thought processes for granted. Added to this is the recent experience of seeing my Mum go from being a really sharp, informed, opinionated woman to confused and rambling in the course of a couple of weeks.  Our brains are so precious. We probably don't look after them the way we should. We don't understand much about how they actually work and don't give them a second thought until something goes awry.  Keith has long covid - the main symptom for him being a sort of brain fogginess.  A friend of mine recently had a minor stroke.  Her brain hasn't got back to working the way it did before. Incredibly frustrating. 

We are made in the image of God. God thinks. He feels. He remembers and He forgets.  As I was thinking about the forgetting thing I began to realise how amazing it is that God can forget things.  

We need to be able to forget.  If we remembered everything we saw, heard, spoke. did, experienced in a day we would go mad. Our heads would explode with the overload so God has graciously given us the ability to 'bin' a massive amount of unnecessary information and filter out the things we will not need in the future while filing away the stuff we might need.  Where do those thoughts go I wonder??  Its a mystery.

God does not need to forget. His mind cannot be overloaded. He knows all things so has the perfect filing system and holds all information about everything in His head all at once.  And yet God has decided to forget stuff.  How does He do that? How does the God who sees all and knows all choose to erase information?  The more I think about it the more impossible it seems 

Isaiah 43:25, ESV
I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

“No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they all shall know Me,

from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

Jeremiah 31:34

Hebrews 10:16-17, ESV

This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”
then he adds,
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

There is a decision in these verses.  I will not remember....  It is  not so much that God forgets our sins, it is that He chooses not to remember them.  He does not go through His filing system looking for them.  He knows all about our sins but He will not think about them when He is thinking about us and He will not remind us of them either.  

In the same way that my brain injured friend is physically unable to remember things, God is physically unable to forget. Yet He chooses to. And I think the reason is because whenever He thinks about us He sees the blood of Jesus over our lives , covering our sins and blotting them out.  I imagine it being like  a pencil drawing which has been painted over in bright colours.  If you look hard enough you can still see the pencil marks. But why would you even look for them when you can focus on the painting in all its artistry? Or sins have been erased.  And forgotten. Hallelujah!