Remember Me
An amazing conversation is recorded in chapter 23 of the gospel of Luke. A condemned man is hanging on a cross next to Jesus and makes this request: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus’ reply is one of the most powerful and encouraging promises in the entire Bible. He says: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Moments later both men die, and their earthly bodies lie in a grave. Following death, the thief’s body begins to decay, yet, mystery of all mysteries, he instantaneously ‘wakes up’ and finds himself with Jesus in a place called “paradise”.
Isn’t that the cry of every human heart? We want to know our life is significant to God; we want to be remembered and to live with him forever. David writes in Psalm 139:16 “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Job pens in chapter 19:25-27 “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
How we are remembered and transformed is known only to God. The Lord seems to “plan” in patterns. For example, in Exodus 25:9 God gave Moses instructions to build a tabernacle according to a very specific and detailed pattern. Many years later, Jesus inferred that the Christ was typified in this tabernacle pattern (Luke 24:27), an earthly representation of a heavenly reality. Are we not also made ‘according to pattern’; after all, isn’t DNA an earthly pattern? Our Creator would have ‘foreknown’ our DNA pattern (in His mind) long before our manifestation occurred on earth. Imagine what that might have looked like: 4 DNA molecules called nucleobases to choose from; 2 nucleobases coming together to form a base-pair that connects the ladder-like DNA double helix; and, 3.2 billion of these base pairs coded in sequence that exclusively produces one of its kind – you! Of course, DNA only appears to be a pattern of our body and soul; our ‘spirit’ is likely something other, but somehow mysteriously related to our DNA. Job gives us some great encouragement, because he indicates we ourselves, the real us and not some ‘other’ form unfamiliar to us, will “see God”.
Genesis informs us we are uniquely made in the image of God (Imago Dei). Although we share DNA with all other life forms, our DNA, that pattern known to God before we were born, is somehow enmeshed with, or imbued with, the divine Imago Dei. It contains the potential to live an eternal life with the Creator according to the pattern He ordained it with. For me, it is a great comfort to know that God knows me from eternity past, the present, and eternity future. “What is man, that thou art mindful of him” (Psalm 8:4)?
