A time to remember

Thanksgiving season ought to be a great time for curing people of a certain disease of which I have read. The disease is called amnesia.

This disease is a comparatively rare affliction. Its main feature is forgetfulness. There are cases on record in which people have forgotten their own names, the date of their births, their family relations; in a word, cases in which memory had become completely blank and the past utterly blotted out.

One such record is of a minister's son who disappeared from an army training camp during World War II. He was hunted for as a deserter but turned up later as an unnamed man on a transport sent back from a military hospital.

What had happened, it was later discovered, was that in the training camp his longing for battle action was too strong to resist. He had left his original outfit and had re-enlisted under another name, was sent overseas and was wounded in the head and hospitalized. When consciousness was restored, he had lost all memory of the past. His name was found to be an assumed one but he was unable to tell who he was or where he came from.

His picture was published in an effort to find out about him, and his parents recognized him as their long lost son. When they met he did not give the first sign of recognition and knew none of his former friends or acquaintances.

Such is amnesia. Physically, it is, fortunately, a rare disease, but spiritually it is not rare. Not in vain does the Psalmist in Ps. 103:2, call on his soul to "Forget not all his (God's) benefits." Kipling has, as the refrain of his immortal recessional, the words, "Lest we forget, lest we forget."

Ingratitude is nothing but a form of spiritual amnesia. It stands for a voluntary or involuntary forgetfulness of all of the blessings we have received from our heavenly Father. Thanksgiving season is a good time to recall, to remember, "to forget not all his benefits," and rejoice with thanksgiving that our heavenly Father has promised to continue them until his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes once again.