Monday Morning Meditation #19: Let Us Remember

While not feeling well last week, I wandered through the rest of Numbers, feeling very much bonded with the Israelites wandering through the desert. Even more so I enjoyed reading about the various locations because I know them. I lived there from 2004-2006. Some of the places still carry the same names in Arabic. Others have changed but are rather easy to pinpoint if they have been part of your routine life. So, unlike what might have been had I not lived there, I read through these chapters as if reading a travelogue, seeing in my memory the various places as they are today. And then I came to Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, Verse 9, where I found rather interesting order from God to the Israelites as they were about to enter the promised land: "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy children and thy children's children."

Reading: Deuteronomy 4:9

Meditation: Are there not times that we, like the Israelites before us, forget all the ways in which God has helped us and provided for us in the past as soon as some new emergency hits when it seems that God is not responding with as much alacrity as we would like to our current need/request? How easy it is to forget the miracles! It is easy to remember that my colleague, Tareq, died this year, but how many people immediately recall the miracle that we all experienced together with Tareq three years ago when he was spared? (Well, yes, of course, we do, when we think about, and it did change us all in important ways; nonetheless, it is not the first thing that always comes to mind. Surprisingly (at least to me), there are even times that I have to remember deliberately God's conk on my head; at times, I still discuss what happened with Jean, still trying to get my head around it and to remember the details. For her, too, it is a special memory that she does not want human brain trace decay to rub away.

I wonder how many other people, once having received a miracle or an answered prayer, continue on their merry way, initially thankful but soon taking it for granted and then nearly forgetting it altogether? (Ones who did not are Stellan's parents who were so overwhelmed by Stellan's miracle that I doubt they will ever forget.)

Likewise, how often do we, caught up in our mundane lives (even the most exciting lives are mundane by comparison with the spiritual adventures that God offers), do we completely forget about God? How often has half a day (or even more) passed without one word of prayer? Advantages to living in the Arab world are the 5-times-a-day call to prayer that sounds throughout every city and town and the ubiquitous prayer rug that silently reminds one and all of a greater purpose than one’s current job or activities.

I, too, have a prayer rug at home and at work, both of which are used by Muslim friends, colleagues, and visitors. Yet, even though they are in front of me, I still forget to close my door and spend a few minutes in prayer, especially at work where I try to maintain an open-door policy for employees. Somehow, when the door is closed, some understand that policy to be an open-the-door policy, and so privacy is limited. Although I do have the power to change that, what I generally do instead is answer the door, and so time and again prayer is put aside, to be remembered next when some crisis hits, major decision is to be made, or someone stopping by needs or asks for prayer.

A visit by a Jordanian colleague to the conference I attended this week in Maryland revealed the limitations of my “memory” on more than one occasion. We spent our free time together, along with a colleague from Morocco. On the first day, as we ate lunch after a brief shopping trip, our Jordanian colleague looked at his watch and noted that we had passed the time for noon prayers, so we needed to return immediately after lunch to the hotel where he had left his prayer rug. I explained to him that American hotel rooms contain no quiblah, the arrow pointing to Mecca, so we used our sense of geography, poor as it might be, to determine the approximate direction. From time to time during the days of the conference, he would remind of us prayer times, quietly and without any thought that we might not be paying attention to the passage of time. When I was late arriving at breakfast Sunday morning because the taxi picking me up from early Morning mass at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Linthicum had arrived late, he smiled in approbation. Of course, he understood missing or being late to some earthly obligation because a spiritual obligation had taken precedence. Were we all to have that attitude I think our days would look (and feel) quite different!

How fickle is human memory! I think it was with reason that God reminded us to remember.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for all those times that I put earthly appeals over spiritual ones, to thank God for patience in not forgetting me even though I sometimes forget Him, to give praise for his steadfastness, and to request Him to continue to clunk me on the head when I need reminding of the more important things of life, such is His presence in mine.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, remembering all the miracles with which I have been blessed. In addition, I am beginning my week with new resolution to remember always not only what God has done but that God is with me every minute of every hour and that I need to close my door more frequently in order to spend time in much-needed prayer.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering always God's past kindnesses to you, current love, and future promises. Let not your memory of the divine ever be fickle!