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Never Forget

You can have Christmas and Easter. Tell me all about why Thanksgiving rocks. President's Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day and Celebrate Red-Head Recovery Day are all fine. But if you're ready to leave the Junior Varsity of holidays and step up into the big time, then today is your day. That's right, today is Fat Tuesday!

This is my holiday, a festive day that begins with a pączki (pronounced poonch-key) and ends with my finishing every dessert within a mile radius of my home. You can read more about the historical side of this holiday by visiting here or googling Fat Tuesday. But here's the basics; Christians would use this holiday to stock up on carbs and then go without during the season of Lent.

And Lent is all about remembering. It coincides with the Passover, which is also a meal about remembering. In this case, it was recalling how God rescued the Israelites from Egypt. My wife, Jennifer and I were discussing this because we are reading the Bible through in chronological order.

We are to the part where Moses gives the Law, in its entirety as well a breakdown of the recent History, to the Israelites about to enter the Promised Land. Jennifer commented that we just read this stuff last week. Indeed she is correct. But I remind her that it had been 40 years since God first gave them the Law. That's a long time. It only takes our kids 40 seconds to forget what we told them to do.

Besides, despite reading about all of their blunders, we too need reminders. Daily, if not more. Some reminders taste like the flaky communion wafer. But others are the pączki, a doughnut that puts other doughnuts to shame. Who says we don't need reminders? Perhaps today, I'll need a couple of reminders.

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