He Never Forgets

“Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” (Isa 49:15 AV)

The verse before the above gives a bit of context.  Israel felt abandoned.  They were in captivity because they estranged themselves from Him.  While in captivity, they repented and sought anew the presence of God.  However, being in captivity for almost two generations, they felt God has forgotten them.  This is quite natural.  They would feel abandoned.  There are two truths that they forgot.  The first is the duration of their captivity was prophesied to be 70 years.  Therefore, there would be no need to feel abandoned if that 70 years had not expired.  The second is the covenants made to Abraham and David.  God gave them an unconditional promise.  They would be His people and He would be their God.  These two truths alone should have comforted them that God had not abandoned them and that after 70 years, He would once again visit them.  The promise is reasserted in the imagery of a young mother and her baby.  The idea is simple.  A young mother would never abandon the child whom she bore no matter how he might be behaving.  And even if there is a slight chance she might, God never would abandon His children.  Ever!

I have a niece who made the art of a temper tantrum something any normal parent would consider extreme.  My dear sister put up with scenes of terror from that child.  My niece could curl the paint off the walls.  She had a temper that could boil an iceberg.  The best way to deal with a temper tantrum is to pay it no mind.  If you try to punish the child, it only grows.  The whole point of a temper tantrum is to control the emotions of the authority figure.  Regardless of whether the objective is being met or not, the child feels if the adult is moved to anger, frustration, or even compromise, then the child has won.  The best thing to do is to simply send that child to his or her room and close the door.  They will wear out.  Honestly.  There should be no acknowledgment of the tantrum and isolation is the reward.  Take away the possibility of emotional manipulation, then the motive for the tantrum stops.  To teach the child to overcome the inclination of tantrums, once it has stopped, the adult cannot immediately reconcile.  The child has to come to terms with the fact a tantrum not only is ineffective, but it also estranges the adult from him or her.  Once the tantrum has stopped, more time is needed so the child begins to wonder if the adult has left him or her all alone.  This is to what conclusion Israel arrived.  They wondered if God had abandoned them.  After the chastening was almost complete, they had to come to the place where they wondered if God had given up on them.

The verse above does not apply only to those who are chastened.  Rather, it is to all who feel the LORD may have forgotten about them.  It doesn’t matter whether we have failed God and He has left us to ourselves, He truly has never left.  It doesn’t matter if our trial of faith seems more than we can bear and we wonder if God has forgotten us, He has not.  He is still there.  No matter how much of a bother we are to the LORD (or at least we think we are), the LORD could no more abandon us than a new mother could her child.  New mothers put up with a lot.  Dirty diapers, midnight feedings, crying for attention, etc.  But they go without sleep and love that child like no other.  As much as our mothers loved us, God infinitely loves us more.  No matter how we might feel, God is still there.  He is waiting with open arms to welcome us, comfort us, strengthen us, and feed us.  He has never left even if we have.