Lest we forget.

I once heard a story about a young guy (3 year old) who was waiting for his younger brother to be brought from the hospital after his birth. He was eager to meet him, as was expected. But when the baby was put in his cot, the big guy insisted that he should have a private talk with his younger brother. After insisting and insisting, the curious parents allowed him to talk to his brother alone. So after he closed himself in the room, the young guy went to his brother and asked, while his parents listened behind the door, “Who are we? Where do we come from? Tell me, I’m beginning to forget.”

That’s exactly what happens to each one of us. That’s somehow what happened to Adam and Eve. We are born with the right identity. We are happy who we are and feel good about ourselves. Everything is ok. It’s as if God comes down and walks with us each day. No problem. That’s Adam and Eve before they left the garden.

Then, like our forefathers, we leave this reality. We leave the garden. We are told that we are not as good as others. The comparison of what is right and wrong, good or bad, better and best, enters into our consciousness and we start trying to be who others want us to be. We think we’re not good enough. We need to do something about ourselves. We start putting masks we believe others will like better. So we lose our identity and try to find one that is acceptable by others. We put a false image that we think is improved and start believing that we are this new image.

But our true identity is in God, created in his image. We allow evil to enter while we protect our new image. We think we can be better by putting down others. And so evil creates more evil. And we hide from God because we think we are naked.

Then Jesus come, as one of us, with the true identity to show us who we really are. He does not defend anything. He just allows God to walk with him. He creates no evil to protect himself. On the contrary, when we inflicted evil upon him, he still did not allow this evil to touch him. That led him to a cross he did not deserve, but said nothing except “forgive them.”

He came to be a reminder, for each one of us, who we really are, lest we forget.