FORGETFULNESS

FORGETFULNESS

“And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand?” Mark 8:21

How many times do we forget the most recent things that cause delay in our progress to get the next thing accomplished? Material things but sad when true about spiritual things. These are the final words in a paragraph recording how our Lord rebuked His disciples. It begins in verse seventeen, and it is impossible to read it without feeling that there was a note of real severity in what He said to them. Notice the rush of His questions. "Why reason ye because ye have no bread? Do ye not yet perceive, neither understand? Have ye yout heart hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not? And do ye not remember? " What, then, was the fault of these men? They were missing the point of His spiritual teaching, because they were anxious about material things. He recalled them to a remembrance of what they had already witnessed of His ability to deal with material need. It is always a strange story, this. It seems inconceivable that these men, really remembering the facts, as their answers show that they did, should yet have failed to apply those past experiences to present needs. Yet is it strange? Is it not a peculiar and persistent failing of the human soul that in the presence of some immediate danger, it forgets, or fails to apply, the value of past deliverances? Yet it should not be so, and it was this very thing which our Lord rebuked. The true attitude of the soul is that of being without carefulness, in the consciousness of what has been done for us. The superlative statement of this is found in Paul's words: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?"