Remember…

Remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness.  Deuteronomy 8:2

The year was 1923.  The New York Times called the earthquake undoubtedly the greatest disaster in recorded time. 

It killed 140,000 people in Japan.  3/4 of Tokyo was destroyed, leaving 3,000,000 homeless.  That destruction was similar over a 200-mile by 200-mile area.  5 major cities were reduced to rubble.  Hardly a home or building was left standing in Yokohama.  Hunger, injury, disease and despair were the norm in the once proud island empire.

Those who lived through those amazing tremors and fires which burned out of control for weeks after the earthquake wondered.  They wondered, that though they had survived the quake, if they would now survive starvation or disease.

Most did survive the months afterwards. Why?    Help came from a number of sources.  One of those helps came from somewhat of an unlikely place . . .from a country which was still coming out of the grips of recovering from World War I.  But it didn’t much matter to the people of the United States.  America recognized the need, suffering, and hunger experienced by Japan in that earthquake, registering 7.9. 

Though many in our own population were scraping by, the USA sent food, clothing, medical supplies, and volunteer workers by the shipload. The American Red Cross collected millions of dollars from the people of the United States for the suffering and homeless.

And the Japanese people were grateful.  The Japanese emperor even wrote our President, “Japan will never forget the love and generosity of Americans.”

What is the rest of this story?  The American volunteers, and money and help were soon forgotten.  A day would come when the land of the Rising Sun sent planes of destruction in return. Japanese airplanes dropped tons of bombs which brought death and destruction to Pearl Harbor.

Are the Japanese the only ones who overlook past mercies?   Of course not.  Today we give thanks that Japan is now a wonderful ally of the United States. 

The point is this.  Long ago the Lord said of Israel, “My people have forgotten me.”  Jeremiah 2:32

The Apostle Paul warns us in 2 Timothy 3:1-2  “Perilous times shall come in the last days.  People will love themselves.  They will covet what others have.  They will boast about their possessions.  They will be proud, blasphemers, disobedient to their parents. They will be unthankful.”

Being ungrateful is truly one of the great sins, when one thinks about it.  Striking back at someone who has first hit us, is what is involved in much sin.  That would be a sin of returning evil for evil.   But being unthankful?  That is returning evil for good!

So God encouraged Moses and the people to remember and give thanks once they arrived in the promised land in Deuteronomy 8.  Why?  Because each of us is prone to a kind of spiritual amnesia when it comes to remembering who we are, whose we are, and what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. 

Abraham Lincoln wrote a proclamation in 1863 encouraging Americans to use the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”   

We would do well on Thanksgiving to remember our Lord’s many gifts, and to say grace  . . . especially for God’s grace – God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. 

John Lehenbauer, Pastor

Christ Lutheran Church and School, Perry

christlutheranperry@gmail.com