The Divine Gift of Remembering

The back door was just painted, but the scratches the dog left are still visible. It has been two years since she passed away. I do not miss the dog. She and I had a troubled relationship. But, I miss what she meant to my son, and the season of life marked by the dog and all my children under one roof. Seeing those old scratches on the door takes me back to little league and band recitals and singing in the car on road trips.

The older I get, the more these changes pile up. Heaps of memories, green trees becoming rotting logs, are stacked all around my soul. A familiar sound or smell brings back a moment, or a person, or a place. A phrase my grandfather used to say. A t-shirt from college in a box of rags. The look on my son’s face that reminds me of my dad. The specific crunch of leaves I learned to love in another forest long ago. 

We are pursued by memories and bound by time. But God inhabits all of eternity at once. Perhaps our ability to remember is a tiny glimpse into the mind of God.

God Is Beyond Time 

Human lives are a video reel that only plays once, only in one direction, and only for a finite amount of time. But, we often sense there is something or Someone beyond our time-bounded physical world. 

An ancient Hebrew psalm attributed to Moses says, “Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God. For you, a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours.[1]” Jesus said, “[God] alone has the authority to set…dates and times…[2]” Islam refers to God as the First and the Last, existing before and after all created things. Hinduism speaks of Brahman, or an ultimate reality, that is beyond time and the cycles of birth and death [3]. Science also reinforces what people of faith believe: time is not absolute. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the later theory of General Relativity suggest that time can be shifted by speed and gravity [4].

God Meets Us On The Timeline

Yet, many faiths, including Judaism, Islam and Christianity,  believe that an eternal God sometimes intervenes at specific moments in the timeline of humanity - bringing special revelation, a sense of presence, or even miracles [5]. 

Scriptures suggest that sometimes we can experience a divine encounter and only be aware of it after the fact. This is a common thread across the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  The Hebrew patriarch Jacob said, “Sure the Lord is in the place, and I did not know it.[6]” The Book of Hebrews in the Bible says, “some have entertained angels unawares. [7]” Sometimes the hand of God is manifest in the ordinary rhythms of rest and food and relationship. “[God] lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. [8]”

Cathedrals In Time

But these moments of divine connection, whether unnoticed, forgotten or even occurring before our time, need not be lost. Judaism places enormous emphasis on shared memories, with traditions like the Passover Seder providing people a connection to a divine moment that occurred thousands of years ago. Rabbi Abraham Heschel taught that moments of remembrance were connections between heaven and earth. He called these sacred moments, “Cathedrals in Time” [9].  

Jesus brought this emphasis on remembrance to his followers “After taking the bread and giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.[10]” He even promised God’s Spirit would help us remember the things Jesus taught. “The Holy Spirit…will remind you of everything I told you.[11]”

Memories & The Mind of God

To a God who numbers every hair, who breathes with every heartbeat, there is nothing insignificant. To humans who stumble through life distracted, exhausted, and only half-aware, miracles could lay like jewels on the ground around us and we would miss them in the moment. 

For us, time is a filing system, our attempt to grasp a reality that is infinitely more complex. We write little books with our lives, and can never go back to rewrite a page. But memories are moments when the past and present stand inexplicably together, and our heart feels something that breaks the laws of time.

Love for someone long since gone

Pride in an ancestor’s struggle

Joy in a moment a decade ago

Awe at something never personally experienced

Peace in a place never see again

Even old scratches on a door can bring to mind miracles of joy and pain and redemption and love that were unnoticed or forgotten. 

For God, each moment in time is just a different page in the same book. He writes the beginning and the end at once, seeing all simultaneously with equal clarity and passion. I believe the spiritual ache so many people feel is a longing to be connected with that timeless world.

For us, every breath that holds a memory can become a cathedral in time, a place where God longs to meet with us. Perhaps memory is a spiritual gift that connects us with an eternal God. 

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[1] Psalms 90:2, 4 NLT

[2] Acts of the Apostles 1:7 NLT

[3] Qur’an 57:3

[4] Special Relativity (1905): Einstein showed that the faster you move relative to something else, the slower time passes for you compared to the observer. Example: Astronauts traveling near the speed of light would age more slowly than people who stayed on Earth — a phenomenon called time dilation.has been confirmed by measuring the decay of fast-moving particles and by flying atomic clocks on jets and satellites. Einstein, Albert. Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper (“On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”), 1905. 

General Relativity (1915): Gravity warps spacetime, meaning that time itself passes at different rates depending on how strong the gravitational field is. A clock placed at the top of a mountain runs slightly faster than one at sea level, because Earth’s gravity is weaker higher up. This effect is so real that GPS satellites must correct for it; without adjustments, GPS would drift miles off course every day. Chou, C.W., Hume, D.B., Rosenband, T., & Wineland, D.J. (2010). “Optical Clocks and Relativity.” Science, 329(5999), 1630–1633.

[5] Judaism - “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). Islam - Qur’an 2:213 — God sent messengers with Scripture “to judge between people.” The Qur’an itself is considered the decisive intervention in history, given at the appointed time to Muhammad.

Christianity goes a step farther and believes God literally took on human form and lived among humans - teaching, healing, and ultimately redeeming them. ““The Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory…” Yet, the Apostle John mourns that sometimes creation does not recognize its creator, ““The light was in the world, and the world came into being through the light, but the world didn’t recognize the light.”

[6] Genesis 28:16

[7] Hebrews 13:2

[8] Psalms 23:2-3 NLT

[9] Abraham Heschel - The Sabbath 1951

[10] Luke 22:19 CEB

[11] John 14:26 CEB