Mar | 22 | Food For Thought by The Mining of Memory

Dream Word – INTEGRITY

Leviticus 25:22 And you shall sow in the eighth year, and eat old produce until the ninth year; until its produce comes in, you shall eat of the old harvest. NKJV

Food For Thought by The Mining of Memory

It was writer Davis Grub, reflecting on his art, who recalling a conversation around the subject says, ‘A young writer once came to me years ago and said, "Why write anything? It's all been said." And I said, "Yes, but not by you." And I think unless you believe in the sacred individuality of everyone, then you don't believe in writing at all. Because no metaphor can have any real meaning unless, having originated in the mind of the poet, it finds soil to make its resurrection in the mind of somebody else.' How wonderful.

I visited a younger church last night. Just planted five years ago it was at that easily recognized stage of growth, where younger, single folks, had banded together, married, mated and brought forth offspring. Like attracts like you see. Very soon, the kids will grow, more married couples with younger children will arrive, a professional and instructional children’s programme will of necessity be instigated and heavily subsidized, a children’s minister and later a youth pastor will be added to the staff and behold!, the arrival of yet another 'S.A.C'- A Standard American Church. The inevitability of it all can sometimes get quite depressing, but that is not my point for tonight. No, my point is that tens of thousands of these new churches planted across America and planted across the world, most readily express the generation gap, by the absence of more mature folk in their ranks. Mature in years, mature in warfare, mature in words especially. Wise leaders of these younger churches will pray for such additions to their church communities.

The first and I feel most famous of David Grub’s novels is 'Night of The Hunter' which was, again in my opinion, made into one of the best movies ever produced. I want to tell you tonight though, that the fruit of this story, revolving around the actor Robert Mitchum playing one of the great movie monsters of our time, as he portrayed a serial killer preacher, who turns one of Elisha Hoffman’s hymns entitled, “Leaning On The Everlasting Arms,” into the most malevolent sound of evil ever heard, grew mostly out of his own aged mother’s recounting of real incidents she had encountered when she was working as a social worker during the Great Depression, in its particular manifestation in and around the town of Moundsville, West Virginia. From the quality of the movie, it is evident that Grub mined his mother’s memories very well indeed.


Older individuals living amongst us should have great stories of the past to recount to us, indeed, have often participated themselves in these great stories themselves and if we are very fortunate, become those great stories of the past, told before us on two legs. They are individuals of life and lip, full of tales yet to be mined by younger folk, deep mines they are as well, full of treasure, laid down over the years in golden seams, which, if found by younger sojourners, can be used to pay the expense of all the encounters of life yet to come upon those of us still ‘wet behind the ears.’ Their stories may be dead and gone, ah but the seeds of them! The seeds of these stories once laid in fertile hearts can find their life giving resurrection in the mind of many others and produce bushels of instructive fruit.

Let us then honour the elderly warriors among us and let us, the warriors of today, make sure our stories are set to seed and fruit and flower in the fertile minds of the always arriving young.

Listen: - Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by Him; and he was perplexed, because it was said by some that John had risen from the dead, and by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the old prophets had risen again. Luke 9:7-9 NKJV

Pray:- Father, may Jesus so manifest Himself amongst our aged, that even despot kings would acknowledge the presence of ancient prophets among us. Father, so fit our own lives with wisdom, that we would mine the memories of the aged and eat of their rich fruit, so that resurrection life would spread its roots deeper in our own minds and our hearts. Finally tonight O Lord, fit us for our own journeys end, with retentive memory banks and stories of the wonders of the Lord to fill them to the full.Amen.