Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, June 30, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Is it okay to forget? We talk all the time about how we cannot and should not forget the atrocities in our past history lest we repeat them in the future. Yet this promise is of a time when there will be no chance of repeating them ever again, since it will be in God’s reign, where there is nothing but perfect justice and peace for all of creation. Maybe, then, it is the hope that we can be freed of our individual and collective traumas because the memories will no longer exist to haunt us. It’s not about burying or repressing our painful pasts, but about removing them entirely, returning us to a state of perfect wholeness.
Maybe I’m jaded, but this leaves me feeling a little suspicious. I’m reminded of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which explored the ramification of the removal of painful memories and drew the conclusion that these things cannot truly be erased because they are what make us who we are. In a perfect paradise in which there is no memory of pain, can any of us actually continue to be who we are? Or is God able to preserve our individuality without the memories of our pains? I don’t have any great insights here. Just curiosity. Who knew that a Jim Carey movie could become grist for the theological mill?
How do I envision who I will be in God’s eternal reign?
