after the Israelites followed God through the Exodus.
“Somehow they had forgotten the whole thing, every piece of it. A whole
nation simply forgot God. That famous prayer, ‘I will in the course of this day
forget thee; forget thou not Me,’ is sometimes thought of as a warm Christian
joke. I don’t think it is so warm. I think that is a lot to ask.”
Yancey adds: “As a member of post-modern academia, she realizes that,
with a worldview light-years away from (King Josiah), a whole civilization is
in danger of forgetting God.”
Before Josiah we have countless examples of the Children of Israel being
warned to “remember the law,” then constantly backsliding – doubting Moses
and God, even imploring Aaron to build them a golden calf to worship while
Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments for them. We may wonder:
what was the matter with them? – until we remember that all of the Word is
about our own lives and is speaking to us.
The world is filled with warnings enough about forgetting God – from
wanton terrorism to our increasingly decadent culture. It is worth recalling t