Always on My Mind

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Deuteronomy 11:18

I was listening to a podcast the other day, and one of the hosts made a remark about The Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. This wasn’t news to me. I already knew this. I hadn’t technically forgotten it. But until the host mentioned it, it was locked away in the part of my memory where that kind of trivia is stored. When he brought it up, it unlocked that piece of info for me.

We learn all kinds of things as we grow and even after we become adults. If what we learn never makes it out of short-term memory, it gets lost and has to be learned again. But if what we learn makes it into long-term memory, it can be stored there for years, decades, even the rest of our lives. Even people suffering from a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s or dementia often lose their short-term memory before their long-term memories.

This is why we start teaching our kids about Jesus very young. We don’t want them to learn about Jesus long enough to pass a test. We want them to know him their whole lives. It’s why we spend two years with our 7th and 8th graders talking about the foundational truths of the Bible. We want them to remember these things for their own comfort and salvation.

Over our lives, we learn so much and experience so much that much can be forgotten. Beyond that, even if the memory isn’t forgotten, it gets locked away like The Beatles and Ed Sullivan until something—a word, a smell, an image—unlocks that memory again.

This is why God encourages us to “fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads” (Deuteronomy 11:18). Even if we haven’t truly forgotten what we’ve learned, if we’re not keeping ourselves in a place where the memory of what he’s taught us is unlocked for us, it stays chained up the back of our minds unable to be recalled. The teaching we’ve received does our faith no good if it isn’t accessible. It does our hearts no good if its comfort is locked away. Come and let God’s Word remind you of what you’ve already been taught.

And one more thing. Memory is quite faulty. It’s easy to misremember, even to falsely remember. Again, this is why we fix God’s Word on our heads and hearts. He has revealed his truth to us so that we may know with certainty his plan to save us through Jesus, so that we may know his will for us, and so that we may know the truth that sets us free.