COMMUNION MEDITATION: Remembering on purpose …

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Remembering or forgetting is part of the human struggle.

Sometimes we remember things we would really like to forget, and forget too many things we should remember.

Then there’s Jill Price.

How would you like to not be able to forget anything? Joshua Harris describes this lady’s unique struggle …

    Most of us find peace over past sins by trying to forget and move on. We find comfort in the distance that comes with the passing of time. The further we are from our sins, the less we feel they mark our lives and the less guilty we feel … Do I even remember half of the wrongs I’ve done? The truth is that I’ve conveniently forgotten most of my violations.

    I read a newspaper story about a woman named Jill Price who has a rare condition doctors call “superior autobiographical memory.” Jill can recall in vivid detail every day of her life since age fourteen. Experts at the University of California studied her for six years to confirm her ability. If you’ve ever wished you had a better memory, you might want to reconsider. Jill views it as a blessing and a curse. She has warm memories that comfort her in difficult times, but there’s also a dark side. She recalls every bad decision, every insult, and every excruciating embarrassment. Over the years, Jill said, the memories have eaten her up. She feels paralyzed and assaulted by them. Peaceful sleep is rare.

    We all want to think of ourselves as basically good people. But we can believe that illusion only because we forget most of our past decisions and actions and thoughts. But what if we remembered them perfectly?

Jesus understood our penchant to forget even the most important of things, and to hang on to things we should put behind us. So He helped us by instituting a practice that calls us to remember something central to our being — His sacrificing His life for the forgiveness of our sins — which gives us the means to put behind us a past wrecked by sin and look forward to new life in Him as new creations. We practice the partaking of Communion in order to remember …

“For I pass on to you what I received from the Lord himself. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant between God and his people — an agreement confirmed with my blood. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it,” 1 Corinthians 11:23-25.

When was the last time you called to memory Jesus giving His body to be broken, and shedding His blood, to save you from your sins? Remembering what He has done for us gives us reason (and the means!) to forget our past sins and to set our hope in what He has accomplished for us. That’s why when the first Christians gathered together, they observed Communion … to remember.

Scotty