Skatin' Down Memory Lane

(Read 2nd Peter 1:12-21)

Six or seven years ago, when Teddy was living in a residential facility in Kentucky, they took him roller skating. And he took to it like a duck does to water! For someone whom occupational therapists have always said has a balance problem, he can strap on those skates and glide around the floor, even doing all that crossover stuff and keeping in beat with whatever music was being played.

Of course, his passion for skating meant that he wanted Mom and Dad to share in it as well. I thought I would get off the hook, since most rinks don't have skates in my size. Unfortunately, the rink we went to did! Which meant that I had to strap those things on, and get out on the floor. Now, as much as I liked roller skating when I was I kid, it had to have been some 45 years since I had tried it. Yet, as I tentatively took those first steps, as I clung tenuously to the wall, it began to come back. I began to remember how to skate!

Peter tells us that one of the jobs he has been called to do is to help us remember - to refresh our memories of whose we are and what we are called to do in this life. To remember those moments when God whispered in our ears, 'I love you, Beloved.' To remember those times when we have stood on mountaintops, and felt a closeness to God that warms us in those wintry days in the valleys. To remember those people who have pointed the way when we get lost, who pick us up and dust us off when we trip over the untied laces of our sin, who keep patting us on the back and telling us, 'keep going; you can make it.'

As we continue on our journey to Bethlehem, may one of the paths we walk be that of remembering.

Prayer: How can we remember the way to your heart, O God, when our minds are crowded with the jingles, the cash registers ringing, the siren calls of the stores? Tie the string of your Spirit around our fingers, we pray, so our memories might be refreshed as to where we are going and how we long to reach our destination. Amen.

(c) 2007 Thom M. Shuman