PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

May 29, 2024

SOME MEMORIES NEED TO BE FORGOTTEN

When I was the president of the LaPorte Council on Aging, I attended the Annual Governor’s Conference on Aging in South Bend, Indiana.  One of the speakers was a gerontologist from the University of Notre Dame.  His thesis was that as we age generally our brains improve in their ability to do their job.  What many seniors take to be a diminishing loss of memory is in fact a data problem which causes an overload on the brain’s ability to process demands on its stored data.

To illustrate his point the speaker used the example of a closet.  When we are young there are not many things in our memory closet.  So we have little difficulty recalling them.

As we age our memory closet becomes filled with more and more information.  Now the task of finding something begins to intensify, especially if we are looking for something in the back of the closet which has not been retrieved for a long time.  Those items in the front which have been recently recalled are still easy to retrieve.

If the speaker’s thesis is correct, it would seem that there would be some benefit to being able to remove from our memory closet all of the interruptions, distractions, and rabbit trails that we noted last week.  I am a saver.  I have this fear that if I discard something one day, more than likely I will need it the next day.  Thus, given the opportunity, I think that I would be somewhat reluctant to discard seldom used items in my memory closet for fear that I might just need them some day.  This caution is fueled by how in retirement I keep running into people from my past whose memory has been pushed to the back of my memory closet.  Their memory might well have been discarded if there had been a general housecleaning of my closet.

Because of how God has created each of us, there are experiences that our brain purposely does not put in our memory closet.  Following extreme trauma many people are unable to recall what took place, especially if it involved severe pain.  The event is eliminated from their memory closet so that it can not continue to haunt the person in the future.

There are events which do make it into our memory closet which need to be eliminated.  Painful personal experiences, broken trusts, traumatic set-backs, or terrible losses have the power to cast a pall on one’s life.  They tend to color everything one does and are like storm clouds that cast dark shadows.  Our memory closet can have pockets of such memories, just waiting to be awakened.

When Jesus walked this earth the Jewish people were looking for a Messiah who would overthrow the Romans and would restore the house of David to power.  Many saw Jesus as this long expected one who would usher in God’s rule.

What the people got on Easter was not restoration, but resurrection.  Out of the ashes of Good Friday God created something new on Sunday.  The miracle of Easter did not just end with Jesus’ resurrection, it continued in the lives of people who put their faith and trust in the risen Christ.  God is still about the business of resurrection today.

God can bring about resurrection in the closet of our memories.  It is as if painful memories are obliterated to be replaced by new ones.  Out of the ashes of painful memories, God brings new life and new possibilities that are not tainted with the shadows of the past.

(This article was originally published May 29, 2011.  Comments may be sent to davidh15503@embarqmail.com.)