I don't know about most of you, but it seems that the older I get, the harder it is to remember things -- even simple things. It also appears that my memory fails me most when I have more things to remember. Maybe I am, as someone close to me recently suggested, becoming more and more "memory challenged." Fact is, I can't remember if I ever had a good memory.

I use more and more of those little sticky notes to fill-in for my sometimes vacant memory. A recent gift of a personal, hand-held data device has come in very handy as well.

But I guess forgetting has always been a problem. Several times in the book of Deuteronomy Moses tells the people to remember that they used to be enslaved by another nation. He tells them to remember where they've come from and what they left behind and the blessings God had bestowed upon them. He exhorts them to not only remember, but to tell all of these things to their children, to write them on the doorposts, to bind them around their foreheads and their arms.

Seems the Israelites, like many of us, had selective memories. Many have failed to remember and acknowledge the blessings of God on our lives. We've failed to humble ourselves before a God who could have left us without a way out of the messes we get ourselves into.

As we consider Memorial Day, we are asked to remember once again. Not that the Jewish people were once slaves in Egypt. We are called to remember that when the need arose, brave Americans answered the call to arms, and many gave their lives. We need to remember them.

We need to remember the children who grew up without a Daddy and the wives who raised their children on their own because so many men answered an urgent need. We need to remember, also, the folks who lost their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers at the hand of the enemy. We need to remember those who were classified Missing in Action or Prisoner of War. We must remember, though it is so much easier not to, those who were crippled -- physically and emotionally -- by what they experienced.

When we wake each morning, we need to remember that there is someone, somewhere, taking a stand in the face of a hostile enemy so that we can wake up, greet the morning, and go on with our lives.