Moses calls the people to return to the Lord, for they had abandoned their faith in many ways. He asks them to remember what God did for them in liberating them from slavery in Egypt and in guiding them through the desert to the promised land.
Sometimes we have a hard time remembering, don’t we? Sometimes we remember in a selective way. Sometimes what we remember changes over time. This week marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs that were dropped on cities in Japan, which led to the end of World War Two. Today, August 9, is the anniversary of the day the bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. August 5 is the anniversary of the day the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
As you can imagine, the use of atomic weapons has been viewed very differently in the United States and Japan. In 1945, after the bombings, a poll found that 85% of Americans approved of using the new atomic weapons to destroy those two Japanese cities. In a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 56% of Americans believed the use of nuclear weapons was justified during the Second World War, still more than 50%, but only 14% of Japanese people surveyed saw the bombing as justified. The Lord calls us to be peacemakers and mediators in the world, the Lord calls us to justice and righteousness, yet when we are in the middle of a violent war fighting for our lives, we may see things differently. And in our modern world today, when we just saw two terrible mass shootings in our country over the past weekend, when we see so much violence and crime in many of our own communities today, we know that working for the ideals of faith of peace and justice is not an easy task. We are called to remember the works of the Lord in our lives. We are called to remember our history and our journey of faith. And we pray that the Lord continue to lead us and guide us on our journey.
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