Selah: Pause and Reflect

[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during May 2020]

You know how it is when a tune or a phrase gets lodged in your brain. It might be an advertising jingle, a few lines from a song or a snatch from a melody. You might not even be able to name it or recall where you first heard it but now it has taken up residence in your memory. It disrupts your sleep and every effort to forget it simply reinforces the mental merry-go-round.

Today’s reflection is ‘inspired’ by one such melody. It comes from a video-clip that is broadcast rather frequently on a local Christian tv channel. The song is called “Come to Jesus” and it does have the mitigating feature of being spiritual in concept. In the video, the singer walks through town, encountering several people in their various circumstances and advising them of the benefits of coming to or singing to Jesus. The sentiment is very commendable but, please, it is crowding out other equally valuable thoughts.

Having failed to effectively delete the distraction maybe we should try putting something else in its place. We have all come across pearls of wisdom and said “That’s helpful – I’ll remember that.” It wasn’t and we didn’t. On the other hand, there are those things that we wish we didn’t forget, like “What was it I came upstairs to get?” or “How did I intend to finish up this Reflection?”

Recently, Chris Ginter wrote of her Easter Morning experience when, despite her best intentions, she could not remember the words of the songs that she wanted to sing. Maybe it was a blessing that she was in isolation mode at the time; image her greater embarrassment had she been with a group intent on praising God together.

Does God forget things too? If ‘not remembering’ equates to forgetting then yes. In Jeremiah 31 and again in Hebrews we read “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” The monotonous repetition of that unwanted melody in our heads confirms that we have very little control over what we can forget or remember. Thankfully, God is much better at ‘not remembering’ than we are and that, in itself, is a good enough reason to “sing to Jesus”!
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author