With each new phase of life we find ourselves looking back remembering special moments and special people that made our lives better by just being who they were in their own uniqueness. We remember what they taught us and how they made us feel. Then on the other hand we remember those that hurt us, those who betrayed us or those that destroyed a piece of our world that can never be replaced.

Each of us looked back yesterday in remembrance of that fateful day on the morning of September 11, when the world we knew as Americans changed all together. We felt pieces of what we thought to be torn from us, the sense of security we had felt in our own homeland ripped from us leaving our lives forever changed.

The lives of those that were taken from us touched an entire country altering the way we viewed those around us. We began to love each other as we were, not as we thought we should be. Color, race, gender, socioeconomic status: none of that matter because we saw each other as people, lives that could be taken in one brief moment of time. But, all too soon we forgot those moments and returned to our own practice of destroying each other through our own selfish desires and prideful natures. We failed to remember.

The children of Israel exhibited this same sense of forgetfulness in the book of Malachi. Just last night, out pastor shared with us of the turning of the Israelites from all that God had done for them, all the love He had shown them, all the promises He had kept. They doubted His love, questioned His motives and grew to despise Him. They failed to remember.

But, there were those who did remain faithful, those who never forgot God’s goodness. Those who remembered all that He had done for them. Then comes the exciting part, God said that those were the ones He would place in His book or remembrance. He promised to remember them. How truly amazing to be remembered by God, to be placed in God’s book of remembrance.

“Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon His name.” Malachi 3:16

I want to remember God’s goodness in my life, I want to remain faithful. I want to be remembered by the one who made me and gave me life. The one who has forever remained faithful in His promises to me. I want to be remembered and I never want to forget.