The Wisdom of Remembering

Date: Friday, February 20, 2026

Readings: Deuteronomy 4 | Psalm 44:1-12

You might want to watch this short video overview of Deuteronomy  from the Bible Project, providing context for the next leg of our journey through the "grand narrative" of Scripture.

Jumping into Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah, we find Moses at his most urgent. He’s standing on the edge of the promised land, addressing a generation that didn’t experience Egypt firsthand, and he’s basically screaming, “Don’t forget! Whatever you do, don’t forget what God has done!” This isn’t nostalgia; this is survival instruction.

Moses runs through the greatest hits: the covenant at Horeb, the fire and the cloud, the voice from the mountain, the uniqueness of Israel’s God. And he keeps hammering the same point: you witnessed something unprecedented. You met a God who speaks, who reveals Himself, who enters into relationship with His people. Don’t let that become just a story. Let it shape everything about how you live… and pass it on to your children.

But here’s where it gets convicting: Moses knows that prosperity and peace are actually more dangerous than wilderness and warfare. When things are hard, you remember you need God. When things are good, you start thinking you’ve got this handled. So he warns them: when you get comfortable in the land, when you have kids and grandkids who never knew hunger or slavery, you’re going to be tempted to forget. And forgetting leads to idolatry, which leads to judgment, which leads to exile.

This is the pattern of human nature: experience God, enjoy blessing, get comfortable, drift into self-sufficiency, replace God with substitutes, suffer consequences, cry out for deliverance, experience God again. Rinse and repeat. In many ways this is the pattern of our individual lives. Moses is trying to break the cycle before it starts by making remembering a non-negotiable spiritual discipline.

The brilliance of this chapter is that Moses grounds everything in personal experience. “Ask now about former days… Has any god ever tried to do what the LORD your God did for you in Egypt?” He’s saying, “Compare notes with history. You won’t find anyone like our God.” This isn’t blind faith; it’s reasoned conviction based on observable reality.

Psalm 44:1-12 picks up this theme of generational remembrance: “We have heard with our ears, O God; our ancestors have told us what you did in their days.” But then it pivots to current suffering, which is honest. Sometimes we remember God’s past faithfulness and still struggle with present pain. That tension is real, and the psalm doesn’t resolve it easily. But the foundation remains: we’ve seen what God can do, so we trust Him with what we can’t see yet.

Devotional Prompts:

• What specific works of God in your life are you at risk of forgetting as time passes and comfort increases?
• How can you create rhythms and practices that keep your story of God’s faithfulness alive for the next generation?
• When has spiritual amnesia led you into idolatry (trusting something other than God for security, identity, or satisfaction)?
• What’s the difference between remembering God’s past work as a museum piece versus letting it fuel present faith?

Prayer: Lord, write Your deeds on our hearts so deeply that comfort can’t erase them and time can’t fade them. When we’re tempted to replace You with lesser things, remind us of who You are and what You’ve done. Give us the discipline to remember and the courage to pass on stories of Your faithfulness. Don’t let our children inherit empty religion; let them inherit living faith built on real encounters with You. Amen.