But God remembered

Genesis 7:24-8:1 And the floodwaters covered the earth for 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat.

I’m intrigued by this phrase. How can we use the phrase “remembered” to describe someone who never forgets?

“The Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on them in their suffering. Yet they say, “The Lord has deserted us; the Lord has forgotten us.” “Never!” [says the Lord]. “Can a mother forget her nursing child? . . . But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.” Isaiah 49:13-16

I bet, though, that during those 150 days trapped in that boat, Noah had moments of forgetting God’s faithfulness. I’ve been there.

In 2009 I needed to know God remembered me. Out of all the millions and billions of people who have walked this earth down through the centuries, if God didn’t remember me, I was toast.

I felt alone in 2009, as trapped as Noah must have felt inside that boat. I hit a wall; I had nothing left to give. Whipped. Done in. At the end of my rope.

Feeling desperate, I did something desperate. I left Karis with inadequate care. I patched together a Karis-care team without sufficient training or supervision or communication with each other. I got on a plane and flew a continent away from hospitals and IVs and meds and therapies and little sleep and relentless setbacks and crises.

In the confusion, Karis almost died. Could have died. And I lost a precious friendship.

But God remembered me, and the people under my care. In his mercy he preserved not only Karis’s life but mine as well. He gave me some rest, and a glimmer of new hope. The ability to come back and start again. To face what I had done, how I got to that place, and what I had to do next.

This is one of the promises that is part of God’s covenant with me, and with you:

He does not forget me.