Since I am in midstudy, my creative juices aren’t flowing (i think there has been a clog in my system for some time now). I am going to relay a message from my senior pastor from first pres in ft. lauderdale.
In his book, “Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect,” Dr. Bob Rotella quotes Mark Twain. I don’t think Mark Twain was ever a golfer but he was a Presbyterian! Twain said, “The inability to forget is infinitely more devastating than the inability to remember.” In other words, what you forget in life may be even more important than what you remember. Rotella, of course, is talking about golf. At least I think he is. He talks about how golfers torture themselves by remembering and replaying bad shots. They torment themselves with nightmares of missed putts, shanked irons, muffed shots. He thinks we would do better to remember long, strait drives, irons that covered the flag all the way and settled softly on the green, chips that fell into the hole from the fringe and putts that found their way from forty feet to the cut. Rotella asks, “The question is, as you stand over the ball and prepare to hit it, which shots you choose to remember?”
Some players don’t choose. They are haunted, almost involuntarily, by all of their bad shots. Rotella thinks we have a choice. But, then again, he is just talking about golf.
It seems to me that we can choose to develop a memory that promotes good. A short-term memory for failure and a long-term memory for success are always a blessing. A golfer really can learn to forget the bad shots and remember the good ones. And a Christian can learn to forget the painful and crippling times, the times of failure, the mistakes, and remember those times of great blessing and joy. That’s what the apostle Paul was talking about in his letter to the Philippians: “But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Memory can be a friend of a foe. There are certain things that once we acknowledge them and repent of them, we do well to forget, to leave behind, to make a permanent part of our past. There are also things we need to remember: times of joy, periods where our strengths serve us and blessed others. We need to remember the events that brought us delight and the seasons of life in which we accomplished some good.
Memory is a great gift. So is the capacity to forget! Pray for the wisdom to forget those things that would do you no good to remember. And pray always for the ability to remember the good and blessed gifts of life that make it so rich and rewarding. Most of all, take Jesus at his word. Remember him in all that you do, and know that he is always with you. Even on the golf course.
- David Berry
I know this is something that I wrestle with. My faults in the past and other people’s faults in their past often haunt me, so this was refreshing and insightful.
