Remembering.

This week marks the anniversary of two milestones in American history:  the 150th anniversary of the delivery of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  Naturally, a variety of stories have been dedicated to both events, in newspapers and magazines, radio and television broadcasts, and other media.  Both call to mind very specific memories for me.

During my fifth and sixth grade years in southern Illinois (the "Land of Lincoln") in the early 1960s, we learned a lot about Lincoln, and we traveled to Springfield, to see Lincoln's home, gravesite, and other Lincoln-related historic sites several times.  During one of those trips, we visited a Lincoln historical museum across from the Lincoln family's home.  Amazingly impressed by all of that history, I bought a facsimile copy of the Gettysburg address, printed on the crinkled, artificially-produced "antique-parchment" paper that was then common for souvenirs.  I remember working hard at memorizing the speech, which I would recite in front of the mirror in my bedroom.

During my seventh grade year (1963-4), I got to see history as it was being made.  In September, 1963, my dad was sent by his employer to Washington, D.C., for a seven-month assignment, and our family all moved temporarily to the nation's capital with him.  While there, we visited the capitol, the major monuments, and a lot of historic sites.  When Mom learned that President Kennedy would travel to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Veterans' Day, we got up early in the morning to go there to see the President.  I was totally awestruck when the President's motorcade drove right by us on the cemetery access road, and President Kennedy waived to us.

To everyone's horror, just a week later he was killed.  We were enjoying a half-day school vacation, when Mom suddenly called my brother and me to the room where she had been watching TV, while ironing clothes.  Walter Cronkite of CBS News was announcing on-air that the President had been shot during a parade in Dallas.  The next day, we joined thousands of people outside the White House and walked toward the Capitol, where the President would be lying in state before his funeral.  The memory of those events remains incredibly vivid to me, even now.

But not only historic and traumatic events command the memory.  I have vivid memories of college graduation, our wedding day, and the birth of each of our children. their games, concerts, dance recitals and stage performances.  I remember lots of other important milestones, and there is a special satisfaction in being able to recall all of them.

So many people, though, suffer from diseases that rob them of their memory, and I can tell that my own memory is not as reliable as it once was.  It's a bit scary to realize that our own sense of continuity with our past can drift away from our ability to recall it.  But we have to remind ourselves that all of our lives are always incredibly brief, and that nothing in our own power is permanent.  The healthiest person with the very best memory endures no more than a little while.  Only God can offer lasting meaning and value.  Our memories can give us "increased devotion" to the tasks that lie ahead, and it is fitting to commemorate important events.  But we should remember (as long as we can) that God is our real strength and hope.