The Fall of Babylon

BY Guest Writer

Text: Isaiah 46:1-13, Isaiah 47:1-15, Psalm 71:17-19, Proverbs 19:21

I forgot a friend’s name the other day. She’s a real, live, good friend of mine. We’ve laughed together. We’ve cried together. We’ve lived near one another and far apart—and the other day I forgot her name. I was talking to someone about a conversation I’d had with my dear friend, and my mind just blanked. I felt like I was groping in the fog for something I knew the shape and form and content of intimately, but could not bring it to mind.  

Have you ever felt like this with God? I have. I know His attributes, know His many names, know His Word, and yet I forget. I grope in the fog for some semblance of the God He seemed to be at other times in my life. But because I’ve missed His presence or it’s been a while since we’ve talked, I tend to forget Him and His character.

Isaiah 46 was given to a forgetting people from an unforgetting God. It was given to a people who had tried to be righteous and found themselves lacking. It was given to a people who had chosen their own opinions, their own gods, and their own ways over the God who had chosen them before the creation of the world. The people who were loved by God had forgotten Him, His ways, and His promises.

There have been so many times in my life when what I know of God—what I know to be true of Him—clashes with the murkiness of what my day-to-day life looks like. Many days my life seems to be at odds with the God I know, and I find myself doubting Him. I forget He’s good, and that my version of good cannot compare with His perfect knowledge of what truly is. I forget He is faithful, and that my version of faithfulness looks more like getting my own way instead of living according to His. I worship at the altar of today’s circumstances, thinking they’re the most important and most pressing of all.

Isaiah 46 reminds me that God is on His throne and was seated there even as these words were uttered by Isaiah, even in the midst of such a long wait, and even as I read them today. God is unchanging. His character is inscrutable. His faithfulness and goodness are everlasting. Even when I forget, He remains.

If you’re prone to forgetting—whether names of friends or your car keys or the one thing you forgot to put on your grocery list—like I am, let this be a reminder to you: God, in His perfection, has not forgotten you, and He has not forgotten the promises He’s made to His people. It’s human nature to forget, but He’s given us His Word to remind us again and again of who He is and what He’s promised, of what He’s done and will do, and of how He loves His children.

Lore Ferguson Wilbert is a writer, thinker, and learner. She blogs at Sayable, tweets @lorewilbert, and posts photos @loreferguson. She has a husband named Nate, a puppy named Harper Nelle, and too many books to read in one lifetime.