Monday - Remember Before You Celebrate

READ:  Nehemiah 6:15–16; 7:1–5

“And my God put into mine heart to gather together the nobles, and the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy. And I found a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the first, and found written therein,” Nehemiah 7:5

Fifty-two days. The wall that was burned, broken, and laughed at was standing again. The gates were hung, the watch was set, and for the first time in a hundred years the city was secure. This is the mountaintop. This is the verse you would circle and underline in your Bible.

If it were us, this is exactly where we would plan the celebration — banners up, people in the square, a day nobody would forget. But that is not the first thing Nehemiah does. He doesn’t throw a party. He doesn’t carve his own name into the wall he just built. The very first thing Nehemiah does is read a list of names.

That old register is what Nehemiah reaches for at the finish line. Before the joy, he remembers — the remembering comes first. Celebration is a good and right thing, but it has to sit on top of memory, because people who forget where they came from lose the meaning of where they are.

What victory or blessing are you enjoying right now that you’ve never really stopped to remember?