The Genesis flood was a disaster of epic proportions. While we have seen the powerful affects of water in our own lives and lifetimes. the idea of a flood that covered the entire world up to the tops of the mountains is so incredible that it is, for some people, not credible. They don't even think a worldwide flood happened.*
But God said it did and so we should believe it did.
But in the midst of that disaster, "God remembered Noah" (Gen 8:1).
This is not a statement of God's mental ability to store and recall information. It is not a testament to God's sudden recollection of something he was supposed to have done.
It is a statement of God's grace. God, in the midst of judgment, showed mercy to Noah and his family. To remember them was not to recall something that had slipped his mind. It was to show mercy to them in a time of trial.
And so it is with God to this day. His memory of his people is an act of grace, both of remembering them in their difficulties and trials and of not remembering them in their sins.
In Jeremiah 31:34, in the New Covenant that God makes with Israel he says, "I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." That promise is repeated in Hebrews 8:11 and Hebrews 10:17, both of which talk about the death of Christ that brings forgiveness to us.
God's "not remembering" does not mean that God no longer knows it; that would be impossible since God knows all things. It is that he chooses not to act like we have done it.
So both in God's remembering and his not remembering, God is filled with grace towards his people in our weaknesses. He who remembers us in trial chooses not to remember our sinfulness because Christ has paid for it.
Today, take hope in God's rememering, both the things he remembers and the things he chooses not to remember.
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*One of the ironies of flood deniers is their argument that "All ancient cultures have some sort of flood narrative because they copied it from each other." It does not seem to cross their mind that these ancient cultures have a flood narrative because it actually happened to their ancestor and was passed down through the generations.
