A perfect memory

We sin. And even when we confess it - both to God and to "confessors," it remains that we have sinned. There are sins that we commit that we grieve and mourn for the rest of our lives. Some of the most grievous are well in the past, according to human standards of temporality. But they will never be far enough away in time from the here and now to satisfy our conscience or make us think them somehow less significant than they are.

Ten, twenty, fifty years from now - how will we think of them then? Will the pain of reflection be so sharp then as it is now? Will our memory and mourning of them ever fade? Perhaps not. But, our memories do fail.

But God's doesn't.

And that sobers. God remembers all of our lives perfectly - every moment, every sin. He doesn't just remember them because they are written down in His book. He remembers them because His memory's perfect. His memory is so perfect, that He knows them as if they happened but a moment ago. Understanding the nature of His memory - its perfection and permanence - actually helps us to grieve our sins properly.

But we cannot forget God's perfect memory of something even further back in "time." God's memory of this something is so precise and clear that it, too, is ever-present before Him. And that Passion impresses God more than our sins. In a very important sense, He cannot even "see" our sins because of the stark image in His mind of those streaming, bloody lines running down that Man's flesh - so much so that He doesn't even "remember" our sins - or at least doesn't remember them "against us." And that is our great comfort. Still, this saving image is often not so stark in our minds as our own sin. You see, our memory often fails in exactly the place it shouldn't.

But God's doesn't.