In Remembrance

Earlier this year my Dad passed away and as I get older I realise how the seemingly insignificant things can evoke a memory and make me smile. One such occasion was the other day when I was at work, and walked past the toolbox of a workman who was doing some maintenance. There, amongst all the tools was a battered Golden Virginia tobacco tin – Dad used to keep various drill-bits in the same sort of tin and all marked up for the type of drill that it contained. It made me smile and for a moment I remembered all those times when I had to help him and be sent to get some tool or other. Usually, I had no idea of what he was talking about or where it was apart from ‘On the left of the vice in the shed!’ This narrowed it down to several square feet and if I hadn’t found it within three minutes he’d come tell me off, pick it up and walk out, with me grudgingly trailing behind him.

The thing is that never once did he sit down and explain what exactly all these tools etc did. I was expected to pick it all up by osmosis! Imagine telling an eight-year-old to ‘Go and get me a half inch rachet socket.’ No child would have a clue – ask for green Lego block with eight nobbly – no problem.

Jesus however was a teacher and spent three years teaching those that followed Him about the way of God’s plan of salvation that had been written and taught by the Jews for millennia. He showed them the way of true Bible based Christianity (as it came to be called) that He was as He said Himself: The Way, The Truth and the Life’ and that nobody can be made right with God other than in trusting in Jesus’ fulfilment of the sacrificial law by His death and resurrection in order that our sin may be forgiven. Nobody other than the Son of God Himself could make that claim and fulfil it.

Before Jesus went to the cross, He instituted what we now call the Lord’s supper/communion/eucharist. When He took those elements of bread and wine which would have been and still are a familiar part of Jewish worship and said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ Which to be fair might have confused those disciples at the time and might have asked themselves ‘Bread = broken body; Wine = blood poured out – what does He mean?’ Then, a few days later the risen Jesus appeared to the two believers on the road to Emmaus He now remind them of all that He had taught them, it all began to fall into place as Jesus broke bread before them.

I just want to finish with this question – how often do we allow ourselves in our busy lives to be first be reminded of all that God has done for us but above all else what Jesus did for us in dying and being raised again to forgive us and that He still lives?