Revelation 21:1-6a
Frederick Buechner wrote an essay describing a dream he once had. In it, he was staying in a hotel. He was aware that he really, really, loved this room. Much more than you should, actually, love a hotel room. Somehow, in this room he felt happy and at peace. It seemed like everything in the room was exactly as it should be. And it felt as if he, himself, was exactly as he should be.
At some point he wandered off to other places and did other things, the way it often happens in dreams. Eventually, he returned to the hotel, but this time he was in a different room and it was not a comfortable experience. He went to the front desk. He explained to the clerk that he would like to have his old room back, that everything about it was perfect and he would much rather be there. Unfortunately, he told the clerk, he couldn’t recall the room number or where it was located. The clerk said, “I know exactly what room you’re talking about. And you can return there whenever you like. All you have to do is ask for it by name.”
He said to the clerk, “I don’t remember the name of the room. What is the name?” And the clerk told him the name of the room is Remember.
Then he woke up. But he never forgot this dream. It was a good dream, but not only that. Buechner felt it was a true dream.
Remembering is something so central to the story of God and God’s people. Time and again the scriptures tell us that God remembered God’s people, which is another way of saying God cared for them, loved them. And in the same way, the scriptures continually urge us to remember God and all the many ways God has provided for us.
In remembering, the way the scriptures encourage us to remember, we know how we have come through so much in our lives. When we remember we see the highlights, but also the dark moments from our past. We see the triumphs but also the losses, every life has both, and all manner of stuff in between.
In remembering, we see all the other people who mattered to us along the way. We remember how they supported us, guided us, loved us. Maybe we remember how they said just the right thing at the right time; that when there was something we needed, they were there to provide it.
When we remember in truth, we know that we came through all the highs and lows of our lives not on our own power. No one does this alone. We have the help of one another, but yet…in the room called Remember we sense that there is even something more than that.
In remembering, we know that what has carried us through it all is something called grace; we know that we are only here, in this place and this time, by grace.
And so we are able to remember with a sense of gratitude – grateful for God’s grace, with us through every step of our lives. By the power of God, which we receive through God’s grace, we may remember our lives in their totality – the joys we experienced, but also the very difficult and painful times when we even thought it might be better to die than to have to live with such pain. When we remember, we know that God was with us through those moments, too. We know that we survived it all by God’s grace.
Yet, even in our gratitude, the pain may remain. The act of remembering the saints, as we do every year at this time, is by its very nature painful. We ache for the losses – the ones we loved, the ones we now long for. We cannot deny that even in gratitude, the pain remains.
But there is also this: In remembering the ways that God has been with us and for us through all that life has dealt us, we know something about God that allows us to have hope for the future.
And this is more than a garden variety hope. This hope we have is much more than the way we might hope that it won’t rain tomorrow or that we will have a good night’s sleep. This is a stronger kind of hope, the kind of hope John tells us about.
John’s revelation was something like a dream; a dream that told him a story I am sure he never forgot because it was true. And as he wrote these things down, he faced the challenge of conveying things to us that we cannot yet imagine. In the revelation there are terrible things that stretch our imaginations in one way, and then there are beautiful things that stretch our imaginations in another way. John’s revelation shows us that, in this world where the worst things can happen, and have happened, the God who works through all things can bring us to a future that is beautiful beyond anything we know.
In faith, by the grace of God, we have hope for a time and place where there will be no more death, no more mourning or crying or pain. We have hope for a new heaven and a new earth where God will dwell in the midst of it, with all God’s people. We have hope that the ones we have lost, the ones we remember today, will be with us once again.
In the room called Remember, we are strengthened by the knowledge of God’s presence with us in the past and into the present, and the hope for a future filled with the light of God. We have this hope because through faith, by the grace of God, we have already seen it. In the room called Remember, we see through the eyes of hope, and know that God makes all things new.
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Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash
