EXCEPT AS WE SHALL FORGET

Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” —Deuteronomy 1:29–31

For good reason, the following is a favorite quotation for many Seventh-day Adventists. “In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”* Remembering and reviewing is a principle that echoes through the Bible’s stories.

In the regular feasts, festivals, and holy days, God established a calendar in which the stories of His liberation and redemption would be retold from week to week, year to year, and generation to generation. But, we also see in Deuteronomy 1 how things went wrong when the people forgot. Frightened by the reports of the giants in the land of Canaan, they forgot how God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt, the most powerful nation in the region at the time. Thus, the book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ retelling of this story.

Among God’s people, there is always a need for historians and storytellers to mine the experiences and teachings of our past for both their lessons for today and courage for the future. And we are called to be such storytellers—in our lives and families, as well as in our churches and communities.

* Ellen G. White, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press®, 1915), 196.