FATHER, HOW IS IT that we have always known you, that from the very first memories as a small child you were present? Maybe everyone who is born into this world arrives knowing of you, as though having come from a previous place? It is as though your thoughts of us were present at our conception, and remained with us through gestation, birth, and the beginnings of consciousness. “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isa. 49:16a ) And if there is a form of truth in these thoughts, Father, we wonder how it is that so many that you have sent and formed and shaped have become people that show no knowledge of you?
As we filter these questions through the logic and reason of a left-brain approach to understanding, we come to fully realize that the tragic loss of such wondrous knowledge is a result of both nature and nurture. The impact of negative environmental and experiential forces overwhelms the primordial memory our Father. Perhaps there were no early earthly stimuli such as, “Train a child in the way he should go,” so that “when he is old he will not turn from it.” (Pro. 22:6) Instead, they “all like sheep, have gone astray, each has turned to his own way.” (Isa. 53:6)
But Father, we too went our own way, yet years or decades later when you sent Jesus “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10), he found us. And when he did, Father, the knowledge of you, righteously hidden from us, was suddenly then once again made known, as though it had always been. Our intuitive and creative right brain wonders at this, and then is overcome by awe of you. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” (Psa. 139:6)
You have not left these others without witness of you, Father, “Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Rom. 1:19-21)
We are well aware, Father, that the way back from the excesses of the darkened heart is a difficult journey to understand by reason. “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3) But it is a journey that must be made, and though ‘free,’ demands the cost of the culturally mal-formed and perhaps self-abusively deformed developed identity of soul. It is a call to be reformed—not repaired—from to death to life through rebirth. (cf. John 3:5-7, Rom. 6:3-4)
God calls out throughout all human history for each created soul to acknowledge his unique sovereignty and supremacy. “See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.” (Deut. 32:39) This is also at the core of Jesus’ teaching. First he says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt. 7:13-14) And following this theme, in the same imperious voice of his Father, he demands an identical exclusive relationship from his disciples. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
Father, how wondrous that when we stray, you call us back to yourself! “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Isa. 43:6-7) Our journey through this life is brief, and we are well satisfied, Father, as we observe the end, with all you teach us, and thankful for your promise and guarantee of eternal life. Solomon’s most intensively considered advice, as he neared his end, was this: “Remember him—before the silver cord is severed and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” (Ecc. 12:6-7)
Father, we remember.
Q. What and when is my very first memory of God?
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