One of the good gifts that God has given to human beings is that of memory.
Remembering our own personal past is absolutely vital to knowing who we are and having a sense of personal identity. We all know how diseases that ravage a person’s memory destroy the ability of that person to function in any meaningful way in the present.
The same holds true for communities and nations. When a nation forgets its past and where it has come from, it finds itself completely disoriented and ultimately unable to move ahead into the future. Of course, like any good gift in our fallen world, this gift of remembering can be abused. It can bind a person, and even a community, to the past in hopeless regret or unforgiving bitterness or even vengeful hatred.
