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FORGOTTEN: The Cycle of Memory

 


Does anyone else feel like they are living in the Spin-Zone?  Actually, it's more like the Spin-Zone and the Twilight-Zone had a really ugly baby and asked you to just watch it while they went out for a date night and then never came back.  Now you're stuck with it.

I should probably explain the ugly baby metaphor.  I read an article this morning about an event that had happened a few years ago that I had forgotten all about.  As I read the information again, my heart and mind were flooded with the emotions I felt when the story first broke.  It was heartbreaking and I remember thinking how tragic and terrible it was to hear the news.

Then I realized that the event I had been reminded of had not taken place several years ago.  It happened a few months ago.  It was March to be exact.  A group of migrants from Ethiopia had attempted to illegally cross into Mozambique inside a trailer (shipping container).  When the truck was stopped and inspected, 64 people were found dead inside and 14 were near death; severely dehydrated and ill.

The story still breaks my heart.  But after I read this story again, I found myself bothered by another reality. I am constantly bombarded by information and am constantly feeding myself with information.  So much so that I have forgotten more information than I have retained.  Some things are useless and just get lost somewhere in the cobwebs of my hippocampus, mixed in with the names of every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character and how many TV's Elvis owned. 

But then there are things that are important.  Things that help shape our view and response to the world around us.  As Christians, our worldviews are solely founded and shaped by the absolute authority of Scripture.  Through the lens of Scripture, we view all that we see and know. I was confronted today by the thought that stories and events in my world, like the one that triggered all of this, are so frequent in our lives.  But so often we are hurried from one headline to the next.  

With media so readily available in so many different forms, we see stories at a dizzying pace and it is impossible to keep up.  I have forgotten more things this year than I could ever remember.  The fact that 2020 has been, well... 2020 doesn't help.

What concerns me most of all is the way that the information of the current cycle seems to dominate us in ways nothing else has.

If I am honest, the scales seem unbalanced to me.  I know the current climate is pivotal for a lot of reasons.  But have we considered all that we have seen this year?  Have you thought about all we have already forgotten?

Thanks to an ongoing web history and a very selective choice of where I read my news, I was able to track the articles I have actually clicked and read in 2020.  It was like dusting off an old yearbook and seeing faces I had not thought about in decades.  But in this instance, it was filled with painful memories and the crushing reality of the brevity of life, the reality of sin, and the imbalance of our priorities.  

So, to the best of my recollection, and that of my web-browser,  here are the things I have learned about and seemed to have forgotten day-to-day this year so far:

JANUARY
  • Gunman kills 19 in Nigeria; torches Church and School
  • Australian bush fires concern locals
  • Puerto Rico suffers an earthquake
  • 4 children killed in Al-Shabaab attack at school in Kenya
  • Al-Shabaab car bombing leaves 12 dead in Mogadishu
  • Ukraine Flight 752 crash kills 176
  • 89 Nigerian Soldiers and 63 Militants left dead after a gunfight in Niger
  • 2 bombings in 3 days in Pakistan leave 17 dead
  • 8 people shot outside of a McDonalds in Seattle, WA.
  • Kobe Bryant and daughter killed along with 6 others in a helicopter crash
  • Fire destroys 35 houseboats in Scottsboro, AL killing 8 people
FEBRUARY
  • Militants kill 62 civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo
  • Los Angeles Greyhound Bus shooting and Texas A&M shooting on the same day leaves 3 dead and 6 wounded
  • Puerto Rico experiences another earthquake
  • 24 people including the pastor are killed in church shooting in Pansi
  • 10 people including the shooter are killed in mass shooting in Germany
  • 7 dead after a mass shooting at the Coors Brewing facility in WI.
MARCH
  • Series of tornadoes ravage the southeast
  • Pipeline explosion kills at least 15 in Nigeria
  • 6 people shot, 4 killed in shooting outside of a gas station in Springfield, MO.
  • Boko Haram kills 92 soldiers at a military base in Chad
  • Boko Haram kills 70 soldiers in an ambush in Nigeria
  • FBI shoot man during an arrest suspected of planning a bombing of hospital treating COVID patients in Missouri 
  • 64 Ethiopian migrants found dead in a shipping container in Mozambique
  • Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand leave 51 dead including the shooter and his mother

APRIL
Apparently, I did not consume much news in the month of April.

MAY
  • Ahmad Arbery shot and killed
  • Pakistani Flight 8303 crashes killing 97
  • George Floyd killed
  • Boogaloo killings in Oakland, CA
JUNE
  • 81 killed by insurgents in Nigeria
  • 20 soldiers and 40 civilians killed in an attack by an unnamed organization in Nigeria
  • Rayshard Brooks shot and killed
  • Mass shooting at the Walmart Distribution Center in California
  • Boogaloo bombing in Santa Clara, CA
JULY
  • Mass shooting at a night club in South Carolina
  • Mass shooting at Pentecostal Church in South Africa
AUGUST
  • Explosion in Beirut kills over 200 and injures over 6,500
  • California wildfires begin to spread
  • Jacob Blake shot and killed
  • Breonna Taylor shot and killed
I stopped there because I saw clearly the pattern that had developed.  

We have all seen the headlines.  We know the stories.  In the US alone in 2020 there have been over 486 mass shootings (defined as "three or more persons shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), at one location, at roughly the same time") leaving 392 dead and 2,052 wounded.  The numbers world-wide for such attacks and the like are devastating.

But how many of these have we forgotten?  How many have slipped our minds?  How many of these headlines, at the time, caused us to pause and say "Oh, how terrible" or even make mention of these things in our prayers, but now they are just, gone?

I am mindful of something I once heard.  10,000 years from now all the stuff you are so concerned about today won't matter one bit.  Believer, don't scoff at that idea.  We are living for eternity.  There is a reason my news feed is filled with death.  It's because I have alerts set up for certain key-words.

I want to be constantly reminded that this life is temporary and that people are dying every second.  I was reminded again today how important it is especially in days like these to think this way.  It is important to think biblically, eternally, and beyond the spin of the news cycle that is so fleeting to the realities that are all around us.

Gospel people think differently because they are different.  They are regenerate people with a heart and mind renewed by the Word and the Spirit of Christ.  If we forget everything else, God help us not to forget that as we face the spin of the culture we live in. 


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