Forgetfulness

“Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.” Isaiah 29: 15

Have you ever forgotten something and then felt like garbage afterward?

I did that today. It can happen to all of us: birthdays, meetings, tests, when we’re supposed to be at work, meeting with a friend. And we feel so bad because it looks and feels thoughtless, even if we didn’t attempt to be rude. And there is no way to “undo” what was done. I think we feel so helpless in these situations. But hopefully we have friends and co-workers and teachers and family that will forgive us and will allows us to move on and try again, without holding it over our heads.

I think we’ve also been in situations where we are the one who was “forgotten” about. Perhaps we have been stood up on a date or get together. Maybe someone was supposed to come pick us up and never showed. Maybe we put a lot of time and energy into a meeting or presentation and no one came. Or maybe we planned a party and there were a lot of no-shows, wasting our time and money and leaving us feeling overlooked and abandoned?

I talk with a lot of teens that think God has forgotten about them, too. They think that He is too busy running the universe to worry about their little problems. Perhaps they are tempted to believe that with all the people and issues in the world, God sometimes forgets about them. Maybe you can feel this way sometimes?

But the truth is that God is not standing around heaven running the universe like an entertainer spinning plates. Running from important thing to important thing, less it fall and break into a thousand pieces. Rather, God holds the world together with one simple thought. The awesome thing about God is that He can think about everything and everyone at once, while at the same time thinking of each thing and each person individually. That will blow your mind when you dwell on it.

So have no fear, no matter what happens in your life, no matter how many times you mess up, no matter how many times you are forgotten or overlooked, God will never forget you. How can you know? Because you exist. If God forgot about you for even an instant and stopped thinking of you, you wouldn’t die, you would cease to exist. So if you are here, then God is thinking of you, and when He is thinking of you, He is loving you. And when He is loving you, what worries can there be?

Dear Jesus, help me to know that You will never forget me. Through Your grace allow me to live in the peace that comes from this knowledge. Amen.