Remember

Today, I recieved a letter in the mail with no return address. It was in a small envelope, like a thank you card sized little thing. The address was hand written, but I didn't recognize the handwriting... at least not at first. Being curious, I opened the letter and slid out a card with a yellow pink and green floral pattern on it. It looked like a thank you card, so I quick played back the past few weeks to try and recall what, if anything, I had done that warrented a thank you note. I came up blank. So I opened it and began reading. The salutation struck me as a bit odd, and then I immediately knew what this little note was. It read as follows:

God,

I love you. I love you bcause you loved me, and continue to love with all you are. God, I want with all that I am to love you with all that I have, with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I will do this, but this isn't something I can do alone. I am coming back, and together, our love for each other will make something beautiful.

This card was addressed to me, but it was a letter to God. The handwriting on the envelope was my own. I had written this in church one morning as an excercise the speaker that Sunday had us do. He told us to write a love letter to God (the message was about our love relationship with God); to write down what we were feeling for God right then, right there, and to address it to ourselves and seal the envelope. This was between us and God. No one else. So I did.

I had been living apart from God for a spell (at least it felt like I was apart from God, I know He was right here with me the whole time), and that morning's message had rekindled a deep desire to fall back in love (or maybe really fall in love for the first time) with the God that I used to lean on and listen to. The Spirit that morning awoke something in me that had been dormant for a while. It was like my heart began beating again, or I felt the sun on my skin after a long cold night. I left church that morning feeling great. I spent the rest of the day communing with friends that I love deeply, and I went to bed, praying to God for the first time in perhaps a year.

I woke up the next morning and went to work. I still felt the warmth that I'd felt the morning before, but it was slightly duller. Every subsiquent day it grew duller and duller, until life became "normal" again. I still felt the connection with God that was made (or re-made) that morning, but the warm fuzzies were all gone, only a memory. As time went on, the memory of the warm fuzzies faded and retreated to that place all lost memories live, and all I had was the connection with God (which is a good thing), and that eventually began to feel "normal".

Once something begins to feel normal, we begin to take it for granted. This is precisely why over and over and over and over in scripture God tells his children REMEMBER what I've done. Remember how I delivered you from Egypt. Remember how I delivered you out of slavery, misery, oppression, and brought you into the promised land. Remember.

But, as I had, the Israelites forgot. The warm fuzzies faded into a distant memory, and the memory faded into obscurity, and eventually disappeared, and their relationship with God became stale and forced. Nothing more than ceremony and ritual. Nothing but religion.

This note that I got in the mail was like a tap on the shoulder from God (from me... that's wierd), like he was gently telling me "Remember what I've done for you. Remember how it used to be and how my son gave His all (literally) to lift you up out of it. Remember how good it is when we're together. Remember." This brought tears to my eyes because I had forgotten something so incredibly precious to me. And I remembered what Christ had done for me, and how grateful I am for it. How much I love Him for it. It brought tears to my eyes because I know that I will forget again, and my God deserves so much more than that. So here's another letter to God, this one I'm not mailing, but praying:

God,

I am so thankful that you loved us enough to come among us, forsaking your divinity and becoming like us, so that you could pay our debt. Thank you for the amazing, outrageous, scandalous grace that you've given us in Jesus Christ. Thank you that you love me so much that there's nothing I can do that will change it. God, I love you, beyond what I can put into words. Help me to remember.