It happens to Greg and I all the time. We see someone and desperately, and I mean desperately try to remember their name. We get in the car and start trying to put the pieces together of where we remember them from, are they friends of the kids, why do they look familiar, who are they.. If it is someone that we think we went to school with the first place we go when we get home is to the cupboard to get out our high school annuals. We start flipping through pages, reading the list of names, trying to put a name to a face. Sometimes we are successful, and many times we aren’t.

When my folks were alive they were the first call if we thought the unnamed person lived or had lived in Lingle. Jimmy and Carmen Shane are our Niobrara County name providers, along with several others folks that might have lived in the area for a spell. It is frustrating not to be able to remember.

Sometimes we hear a name and in conjures up a memory of long ago. “Oh. I remember that she used to make the best cookies..”, or “He was one of the best farmers in the area”. Sometimes the remembrance of a name or a face is not a good memory, one that it would be ok to forget.

This is a weekend of remembrance. A weekend to remember those who paid it all for the freedoms that we have. As we honor them this weekend, we may find ourselves at the cemetery remembering our loved ones as well. As we walk along doing the things we do, we see a name and we try to remember. We may stop and read the headstone and talk about when, where, or why do I know these folks. People that were a part of our past that you would think that you would never forget, but we do.

That is a sobering thought to me that there will be a time that no one remembers who we are, and they don’t have a clue of all the “wonderful” accomplishments we feel we have accomplished or the accolades that we have received. It is almost inconceivable to us that we could ever be forgotten. 

So what’s the point, what are we even doing here, and that is the best question we can ever ask ourselves. What am I doing that has a lasting effect for the kingdom in the world around me, whether it is remembered or forgotten, what am I doing. James 4:14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 

The people of this world may forget us, but rest assured God won’t. May it be said of me, (replace my name with yours), Peg loved the Lord her God with all her soul and all her mind, and she loved her neighbor as herself. (Matthew 22:37-39). That my friends is worth remembering.