My mate said this to me.
'I want to show you something.'
He took me to see a grave.
My mate has become a Christian recently. He does amazingly missionary things. He also does amazing unseen things.
So here we were in the eeriness of a darkening winters evening, walking through a graveyard looking for a grave.
My mate knew exactly where the grave he wanted to show me was.
It was a fairly well kept grave.
It was the grave of a young guy who died in an accident back in the late 70s.
My mate told me that this guy had sat next to him at school.
They were friends.
He explained to me that he came and took care of the grave regularly. The young lads family had long moved out of the area, and he felt someone needed to look after the grave plot.
In this bizarre scenario, I was touched deeply.
My mate had wanted to keep this young lads memory alive, and remembered him by taking care of his grave.
That's what I call a friend.
So this morning as I was speaking at a remembrance day service, this visit to the grave that night flashed into my head.
I was speaking from Malachi 3.
God's people were having trouble remembering what God had done and was doing for them.
Except for a remnant, who talked to each other about God and then honoured and remembered God by writing their names on a scroll in His presence.
The rest of the people were just dismissing what God had done.
They seemed to have forgotten.
We remember today those who have fought and died for our freedom.
It is quite right they should never be forgotten.
But I really felt in my Spirit this morning that we should never forget what God has done for us, or is doing for us, or will do for us in the future.
I love that picture in Malachi 3:16 of a remnant of people who hadn't forgotten God sharing stories and then deciding to symbolically to write their names in a book of remembrance of God.
They wanted to honour God.
They made sure they would never forget him.
It's something for us all to maybe reflect on.
Do we want to be part of the remnant?
Or part of those who refused to remember what God had done for them?
My mate showed me that night in the graveyard that remembrance is important.
He didn't forget his friend.
Right at the start of the book of Malachi God makes a statement.
He says to his people, 'I have loved you, but you ask,'how have you loved us?
My mate loved his friend and if he was alive he would know what my mate had done for him.
I pray that we would understand God loves us and we would always remember him.
Forever.
