Reminding and Remembering

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0:00 I was thinking about this this morning, I realized I still know the names of all 50 states in alphabetical order, but only if I sing it to the tune of that song, which I'm not going to do. For y'all's benefit, I will not do that right now. But I still remember that. It just fascinated me, the stuff that like sticks in my brain. And we were on the way here, Charlotte and I were riding in the car, and she's like, well you do know all the words to back to the future. And I was like, yes I do, because we watched back to the future last night for the first time the kids hadn't seen it.

0:33 And I was like, yeah I can still go start to finish on that movie. There's probably a ton of movies that I can do that with, but I don't really realize it until like one starts. And then I'm like, man that stuff is stuck in my head. Really funny. So, but it's important, what got me thinking about that was we're going to talk a little bit about a little bit about a place that I feel like scripture kind of invites us to remember. And also remind. So we'll spend some time thinking about that. I did think, the memory that did pop in my head, that's not a serious one.

1:06 But I thought, man the first time I was ever really impressed by somebody's ability to like recall something. And I actually remembered when this was. And it was 11th grade. And I had a friend named Gareth, and Gareth was a really interesting dude. And we like worked at like an after school care together. And Gareth was probably, I was probably about, it's probably shorter than I am now, which is not saying much. But Gareth was this big giant dude who was always like running around with the kids. And every time he'd drive by his house he'd be in his garage with the garage door open.

1:40 Just like working out by himself. But just hilarious guy. And I realized one day, and I remember very clearly of being very impressed with his memory. He knew all the words to rappers delight by Sugar Hill Gang. And if you don't know that, the original version of that song is like 13 minutes long. And dude did it start to finish. And all of us were like, we didn't know what to think. We were like, holy crap dude, what do you do with your time? But somehow he had it front to back.

2:10 So we're going to see where that shows up in Deuteronomy. Pray with me real quick. Great Lord, thank you for the time that we get to be together as your people. We just invite you to impart some things that are true into our hearts and our minds. And to help us remind each other of what's true, of who you are and who we are. And help us to remember some things that are true of you and what you say about us. Jamie, pray.

2:40 Amen. If you haven't been around the past few weeks, Ben just finished up a series on food in some of the Gospels, which I love that Ben chooses series. Like, hey, we're just going to do a series about eating meals. And I'm like, that's not really reminiscent of the Southern Baptist Church I grew up in. That's not how we picked series for sermons. But it was pretty rad. So we transitioned out of that and we're spending six weeks talking about actually some just favorite verses.

3:10 And so Ben did one last week from Ephesians 5 and then we've got four more weeks after this. He did ask me to remind y'all, he actually wants you to send him some favorite verses of yours. So if you haven't done that, you can send it to him, you can email him, you can hit him on the WhatsApp thread for the cross as well. But that's what you're thinking about. And so he asked me, you know, when he's like, hey, they asked me a couple of months ago if I could preach today. And then a little while back, I was like, so what's your favorite verse? And he said the favorite verses thing. And I realized in it, I was like, shoot, man, that's hard.

3:42 And this little part of me is like, oh, but I have so many favorite verses. But that was a very small part of my brain. The other part of my brain was like, man, when you ask me to preach twice a year, now I'm like, shoot, I've got to remember what I preached on last time. Because if you tell me the favorite verse, I'm probably going to do the same thing and not even realize it. So forgive me if I've done this before. Kidding. But I realized that some of the stuff that I've done in my life, I've done this before. And I realized that some of the stuff that sparks in my brain are these places that often

4:12 I feel like, yeah, they're the places that I think God calls us to try and remember the things that are true. So today we're going to look at Deuteronomy 6 for a little bit. So if you have it, turn to it. If not, we're going to read it all good. But I'm going to read it and then we're going to go back through it. So Deuteronomy 6, verse 1, says, these are the commands, decrees and laws, the Lord your God, directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you're crossing the Jordan to possess.

4:44 This is Moses speaking to Israel as they're getting ready to come out of the desert and into the promised land. He says, so that you and your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you. And so that you may enjoy a long life. Here, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey just as the Lord the God of your fathers promised you.

5:14 Verse 4, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts and press them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.

5:45 So that really is one of the passages that has stuck with me a lot of my life. And I was sitting with it this week and I was kind of asking myself, I was like, man, why is that? And so that's some of what I want to unpack because those last couple verses have, they've stuck in my head for quite a few reasons. But as I was listening to Ben preach last week, he said a phrase, he said, that all kinds of realities are preached to us at all times. He said, all kinds of realities are preached to us at all times.

6:18 And so that stuck with me as I was reading this and thinking about what are these things that God says? Because this passage right here in chapter 6, from verse 4 through verse 9, it's called the Shema. I think I'm productive. Am I pronouncing that correctly, Mecris? And so it's famous passage where Moses kind of gives us the law that then we'll look on a second where Jesus kind of summarizes it later. But it goes on and it talks about that these are the things that we are called to teach

6:50 our children and our children's children and the things that we're taught to talk about when we walk along the road and things that we're called to talk about when we're sitting metaphorically around the table. And we're called to do so far as to write them on our door frames so that we see them when we go in and out. And when I think about those pieces, the two words that come to mind for me that we'll come back to in a minute, is this idea of what is God asking us to remember and what

7:21 is God asking us to remind each other of? I do kind of believe that I like those words because I think most of the good things that we're taught, somehow they're things that intuitively and internally we really know and we're really just being reminded that they're true. And so this idea that God invites us to continually remind ourselves and each other so that we remember the things that are true about him and us is a pretty powerful in this passage. But to kind of begin to understand that a little bit, I just want to spend a few minutes

7:54 and think about what is he actually talking about? Like what is Moses actually talking about when he says, you know, impress these things upon your children and what does he mean when he says, you know, that we want to teach them these things? And so for the context, what's happened as Moses is telling this to Israel, right? What are the commands and decrees and laws that they've just got? And you remember what's happened in the previous chapter? The previous chapter, they just got the 10 commandments, right? Do you remember learning the 10 commandments when you were a kid?

8:27 I can tell you where I was and what I had to memorize it. I memorized it at junior camp for the church I grew up in and that church was at Camp Flying Eagle in East Bradenton. And when I look back, it was like super, super fun and I look back and I'm like, man, that was like, it's amazing. Like we didn't all like dive a staff infection because it was the hottest, grossest camp ever. And it was probably glorious to like a third grader who just, you know, wanted to be dirty all the time. But I remember memorizing the 10 commandments, just like some of the passages that I realized

9:00 I was thinking about this week that I remember, I memorized it camp. And I would love to believe that I memorized them because, you know, it felt like a really good thing to do. But I memorized them because if you memorize the most stuff and the other dudes in your cabin memorize the most stuff, then you got to win Coke and Pizza at the end of the week while everybody else was still eating peanut butter and jelly. So you were super motivated to memorize stuff as fast as possible. And the amount of stuff I could recite at the end of a week was like pretty wild. I didn't remember most of it the week later.

9:33 But I remember when I learned those things, and I remember, you know, even growing up with my perception of what it meant when I heard people talk about the law. Right? That when I heard people talk about what was the law that came down kind of with the 10 commandments. And Israel was given these 10 commandments where, you know, Moses comes down and says, you know, this is how the Lord says that we are to live. And I realized that when I was growing up, I did really internalize those that here's

10:04 like these rules. These are the rules that we're supposed to follow. And why are we supposed to follow them? Well, as a third grader, if you follow those, then you get Coke and Pizza. But as you grow older, it felt like, okay, these are rules that, they're the rules that just, these are the things that we're supposed to be doing. And I've thought different times through my life, I was like, I don't know if I ever really attached a why to those. You know, there was a what, but I didn't really ever really wonder about the why.

10:34 So it's interesting as Moses comes to this, you know, where they are in the desert and they're getting ready to go into the promised land. They're getting ready to go into the land that God says, hey, I'm going to give you this land of milk and honey. You're going to go in and these things are going to happen. But I've also brought you out of Egypt, which will come back to me in a second. But I've also brought you out. And so you're in this interesting in between space. We're kind of right in the middle, but we're also kind of right on the cusp of walking

11:04 into something. And here is how I want you to live. Now as I've gotten older, I don't really get Coke and Pizza for memorizing stuff anymore. I realize, but I started, I started to wonder a little bit more about the why. Now the thing about the law that Moses communicates from God to Israel is that it was never just

11:36 about, hey, here are the rules that you're supposed to do. And we can see this in verse one, two, three. If you look at what we just read, it says, God directed me to teach you to observe this in the land that you're crossing the Jordan to possess so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you and so that you may enjoy long life. Be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly

12:07 in a land flowing with milk and honey just as the Lord the God of your fathers promised you. God gives them some very specific examples of how to live. God also is gracious enough to give them some very specific explanations as to why. Like he doesn't say, hey, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. He says, hey, I want you to live this way because when you live this way, really good

12:42 things seem to happen. As I've reread that over the years, I've started to go, wait a second, it really does seem like God is saying, hey, when you live this way, you're actually living the way you were designed to live and when you live in line with the way you were designed to live, really good things seem to come your way. When we think about Israel hearing that, where was Israel coming from in this place?

13:17 So Israel hears this, hey, this is how we're supposed to live and Israel identified itself as well. Israel identified themselves and they were told that they were the people of God. What did it mean to them to be the people of God? See, as I was sitting with this this week, I was thinking, I was like, man, okay, what would it have been like to hear that? And I think like for Israel, when they hear, hey, this is how I want you to live, what they're going to hear is hopefully how we would hear it. We would hear, hey, this is how God says the people of God are called to live.

13:52 And now when the people of God are called to live in the way in which they were created to live, really good things seem to happen. I like to think of it as it is this place where God gives us a picture of what it means to live in the right context of who we are. Ben mentioned last week, you were hit with all different realities at all times. He gave examples of the things that you're hit with that promise to make life work well,

14:23 the things that we're told are the things that we're supposed to be aiming for, what success looks like, the things that promise to give us life. And God has kind of given Israel this picture of, hey, this is how we actually move towards life. And Israel is going to hear this in the context of who they are already told they are. So hold on your mind for one second. So who is Israel believe they are? Now, Israel, the people that Moses is talking to, they believe their identity is wrapped

14:55 up in a few things. One of the things that they're going to believe their identity is wrapped up in is going to be what God said about them and Genesis 1. And I don't know if it takes your brain there, but that's where it takes me, is what God says about who they are created to be and Genesis 1. So in Genesis 1, I'll look at it for a second. In Genesis 1, after we look at creation, God does the whole thing where He says, you

15:28 know, land-produced living creatures according to their kinds, all the stuff. God made the wild animals, all the stuff. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created them. Male and female, He created them. We could talk a lot about just the last line there, but we're not going to get into that

16:00 today. But it's super key, I think. And I think it's something that I know, I'm assuming y'all are somewhat like me. I don't walk around day to day feeling as though I am made in the image of God. Only you do. I would hope that for that for you. That is not on the forefront of my mind or my emotion or just my general experience on a day to day basis.

16:33 But it is key to who God says you are. It is key to who God says I am. And it was really key. It hopefully would have been really key in Israel's mind to who God says they are. And there's something really cool in verse 1-3, if you can catch it, that they're going into a land. Well, who are they going as? They're actually going as people created in the image of God. See what happened in Dometrius and I learned this from Pratt, from one of our professors way back in the day. What would happen back in the ancient Near East, like when these passages were written?

17:08 Well, if somebody was a king, if somebody was a ruler, how did they let everybody know that they were king? And how did they let everybody know what they were king of? Well, what they did was they actually had statues and images made of themselves. And so when they would conquer a land, they would have all these statues made of them and then they would go and place those statues all around that land. That goes all the way back to even like when you look at Roman times and you look at there

17:42 would be images and busts and statues of whoever the ruler was at the time because then when you had to pay taxes, somebody was like, why do I have to pay taxes? Who's in charge? They'd be like, well, this guy is in charge. That's his image right there. So we know who was in charge. So for anybody in the ancient Near East, when they read the first books of the Bible and they read that man is created in God's image, it's going to connect with them in the way

18:13 of, wait a second, we're talking about God as king and you're talking about that God populates the world with a bunch of images of himself with a bunch of little gods made of dust, right? Which is fascinating. We could talk hours about what that means. But it's pretty fascinating to think about that when God says I created you in my image, I created a man and woman out of the dust, right?

18:45 I mean, this is crazy mix of like being God-like and being incredibly, incredibly fragile, right? That's wild. But that's how Israel is going to hear this. Moses is saying, hey, we're going to go into this land. They're being given this kind of clear list of, hey, as you're going in as the images of God, you represent him. There is this statue that you people actually look at and because of the see you, they actually

19:19 see what God is like. But that's actually how I believe that's how we're created to be, right? It's often not how we think of it. My parents had these friends growing up and when I was growing up and one of them, he started a bunch of companies and made a ton of money. And I remember in the town I grew up, he built this giant, giant, giant house on the water. And it was like one of those things.

19:49 It was like the talk of our small town as it's going up because you're like, oh my gosh, he has six garages. And everybody's in town. He has six garages. Holy cow, he has six garages. It's four stories. And I remember he put this statue. I googled it this week and it's like you can buy it. It's a statue and it's called the self-made man. Has anybody ever seen it? I'm not suggesting you get it. But it's a statue and it's a man chiseling himself out of stone.

20:22 His house was built when I was about 14 or 15. And I remember hearing about that statue and you could drive down the road and you could see it in the opening of their house or whatever. And I remember even as a 14 or 15 year old being like, that seems a little messed up. I see it's a little weird. And then I googled it this week and I was like, man, two things came to my one. I was like, you can buy a $30 version of it and you can buy a lot of money version of

20:52 it. And the other thing I learned when I googled that, the self-made man sat you to see if it existed was a real thing. It really seems like there are a lot of people in the world who are googling how to have a statue made of themselves. That popped up crazy. There's all these options where you can have a statue or a bust made of your head and your face. And apparently lots of people in the world are trying to do that. Very interesting. The idea of that self-made man stuck with me for, how old am I? He stuck with me for 30 years.

21:23 I've thought about that on and off for 30 years and wondered how as a 14 or 15 year old I kind of even then felt like that was a little off. Because that is not anything like the image of God that God tells us we are. It's not anything like the way that God seems to invite us to live. So Moses talking to Israel and he's saying, hey, these are the ways that we go into the land.

21:54 Here's the ways that you live as these images of God. And then it goes on in verse 4, this is hero Israel. And that's where the Shema comes from. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That means that there is one Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Where else do we hear that verse? Do we hear that verse actually all through the Bible? It's really interesting to me that that verse shows up in so many different books of the

22:26 Bible. But one, I want to think about for a second is that that's actually the place that Jesus points us to kind of sum up the law and the prophets. So if you want to look, we're going to look real fast because I did this part. Matthew 22. So Matthew 22, remember we're just talking about this verse that says, love the Lord your God, your heart with all your soul, your mind, strength. And in chapter 22, Jesus is in one of a few places that he ends up in where the Pharisees,

22:59 the rulers of the day, the really learned people of the day that really love following the rules. They try and kind of trap him based on if he's following these specific rules or not. And in, I'm sure I'll write one wrong page. Yeah. So verse 34, it says, hearing that Jesus is silenced to Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

23:31 And Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. I will tell you, honestly for me, those verses are, they're pretty impactful for me because

24:02 partly how I grew up and not saying I was necessarily intentionally taught this, but one of the ways that I internalized how I was supposed to be living involved a lot of rules. And in some ways I think we as people can kind of gravitate towards rules because they can give us a little bit of definition of whether or not I'm measuring up. But there's something amazingly impactful that Jesus goes, hey, there's all these things and all these ways that we've kind of given you to live, but really what sums them up is loving God and loving others as yourself.

24:39 He's directly quoting Deuteronomy 6. What Israel is being given and what they're asking and what we're talking about, this kind of way in which we're reminding and teaching these things to ourselves and our children and the people around us is we're being given this image of here's what it can look like to live as the people of God. What Jesus goes on and does is Jesus gives us a couple things. In the Sermon on the Mount it's a great place to see it. Jesus does a couple of things where he actually talks through all these very specific ways

25:15 in which the people of God look. What it looks like to be merciful, what it looks like to be loving, what it looks like to be faithful. So we're given this, it's kind of like fleshed out where we're given these powerful images of what it means and what it looks like and what it can be to live as the people of God. But he sums up and kind of elaborates on this verse from Jeremiah 6.4, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and soul and strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.

25:52 A few things in there. When I was growing up, I grew up surfing on the gulf and yes you can surf on the gulf. But I grew up surfing on the gulf and most times we would surf would be in the winter when there'd be a large cold front. And I realized early on my dad would drop us off at the beach and I remember realizing that we were not where he had dropped us off when we came in two hours later and we

26:23 realized we would be like a mile down the beach. So one of the things I learned from the older guys I'd surf with is, and I've tried to tell this to my kids a little bit, is I learned how to actually figure out where I was. And I learned, and this is like the surfers way, many people learn this much more practically, I learned how to, what they would call you, you got to kind of try and get your position. You actually had to pick fixed points on the land and it was best if you picked two because you were moving and you had to pick two and if you picked two and you got them

26:55 to kind of line up then you could figure out, you put one in the background and one in the foreground and you'd get them to line up and then you could know where you were. And you could know which way you were moving. You could know if you were drifting, you could know if you were getting far away from the people that you needed to stay near, you could know if you were going to end up a mile down the beach from where you left your car. Charlotte and I did this a little bit yesterday when we were surfing at Daytona. We were kind of keeping an eye on where we left our stuff and then which house we were surfing in front of because we were drifting a little bit and we figured out where we were.

27:25 What I'm suggesting to you all is that what we get in Deuteronomy is also what Jesus gives us. He gives us this picture of how we actually can figure out where we are. The qualities that Jesus sums up, the law that Israel is being given, he says love God and love others as yourself. So we get this fixed point of what do we know about God and who God is and we get this fixed point of how do we love other people well.

27:59 And out of that I can figure out where I am. I can figure out what I believe is true. I can figure out how I believe I'm living. I can figure out what matters. I can figure out what I orient my life towards. I can also do this cool thing where I figure out if I'm getting kind of a few miles down the beach. I can figure out a little bit if I'm a little farther lost than I want to be. And I also get a few fixed points to come back to.

28:35 So if I lost you to bring you up to speed, what we have is we have Israel being given these very clear pictures of hey, here's what it looks like to live like the people of God and somehow really good things happen when you live as the people of God. It helps us remember who God is as the one who created you and it helps you remember who you and other people are and that they are created in the image of God. And so we have a couple of things. We have one, this real clear experience and validation of what God is like and this real

29:10 clear experience and what I think of as an affirmation of how amazing it is to be human. If those sound overly simple to you, it's not. Because like Ben was talking about last week, the reality is that we are faced with all the time. They tend to do a few things, but I think a lot of it can be summed up in is they often tend to make God either distant, non-existent or at least very small and they often make you and I very small.

29:44 So not only do we lose the reality of who God is and what he is like, we also lose the reality of what it really means to be created in his image. And maybe that's where we end up with statues where we think we are creating ourselves. Which is a scary prospect because I don't know if I want that amount of power because I definitely don't trust myself that much.

30:16 As we finish walking through this, impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. One of the things that Israel would have heard as they are thinking about how they live as the image of God is being the image of God for Israel was always completely wrapped up and linked with being the people of God. One of the things I love about what Ben talks about is that Ben talks a lot about being

30:48 the people of God. Part of the reason I realize I love that is because that's not the type of theology that I grew up with. I grew up with the theology that was very much like me and Jesus and all the rest of you can go get your own stuff together and that's how we do it. For Israel and I really think for you and I what we're invited into is this idea that to be the people of God, you get to care for me really well. In doing that, you get to have a profound effect on how I'm living that out and hopefully

31:21 vice versa. Unfortunately, I think that gets lost from any of us. But one of the reasons I say that is because when we hear these passages like odd times, one of the mandates that was given by God to Israel was to go and multiply and basically spread God's image through the world. Please hear that. That's not just about having kids. When we think that's about having kids, that's not the point at all because the kingdom grows and people are brought into being and realizing and remembering that they are the image of

31:56 God in all of these ways. All that to say, that's the largest lead up to a three minute final summary of my favorite verses ever, I promise. What I love about this piece is the way that the writer goes through and he basically gives a bunch of sayings really, which would have amounted to you at that time. Press a bunch of children, talk about it on the road, write it on the door frame, tie it on your hands. There's some in the Jewish tradition that interpreted that literally and you'll still

32:29 find some Orthodox that will have the box of verses on their hand or tied on their forehead. I forget what they're called. I think they're like phylacteries or something. Philactery? Okay, that's close. But I think when we see this, so much of it is it's like this place where this is everyday life. The things that we learn that are true about who God is and the things that we learn that

33:01 are true about who we are need to be reminded to us in as daily of a thing as walking in and out of your door. In as daily of a thing as when you just do the everyday walking along the road with your kids. I was talking with a friend this week about how actually like those conversations, I didn't realize until I became a parent. Those are sometimes hard, no offense guys. But sometimes having like conversations about like, I'm like, man, this is actually harder

33:35 to have like a real conversation about these like deep questions that I don't really have the answers to. I kind of just, you know, this is a little overwhelming. So sometimes the everyday is even a lot. But I think what God invites us into in this way where we kind of get to figure out how we know where we're at, how we know who God is, how we know who we are is in this everyday reminding.

34:06 So I don't know what that looks like for you, you know, and partly just because this was on my mind this week, you know, I was thinking about this idea of memory, you know, and I was thinking about all the verses I memorized, you know, as a kid at camp. And some of it probably stuck so it was good. Some of it did. We won and got coaxed and pizza and that was cool. My sister always memorized more. And so she would always win. She always won the most Christ-like award at camp, which was really odd. And we still laugh about the fact that that was actually a printed out award.

34:37 And I was like, I don't think they've got the point, but it was weird. But when I thought about that, I was thinking, it's like, man, what are the things that I forget? We have a neighbor down the street from us that she's going through some illness. And she's always been a little bit more of a hermit. And I'm going through some illness and we were talking to her in the street the other day. And she said, what day is it? And I think it was the 11th.

35:08 And we said, it's the 11th. She said, no, no, no, no. Like, I don't know what day it is. What day is it? You know, that might sound like, you know, strange, but I think, y'all, if you're like me, it's easy for us to forget the most basic, true things about the world in which we live. It is easy for us to forget what we were created for and who were recreated by and what it

35:42 looks like to be created by God. So how do we remember? I think we remember in these everyday ways that sometimes it might look like, you know, that might look like for you going, man, okay, how do I like memorize some stuff that's true? You know, I was impacted this year. I have not started memorizing something. So this is not like I memorized stuff. I was reading, I read Alexei, Alexei Navalny's memoir earlier this year.

36:13 He was an activist in Russia who was killed in prison in the past few years. Really, really powerful read. And he was not, he did not have faith in the beginning of his story. And somewhere along in his memoir of being in prison for the last few years of his life and somewhere along the line, it's this wild place where all of a sudden you're like, this dude is like believing the things of God and about himself.

36:45 And it's just wild image of watching him find himself anchored to things that are true. And near the end of it is really interesting because he actually memorizes the whole sermon on the mount in prison. And it's a really, really powerful picture of watching somebody slowly settle into what they deeply had always known to be true. So I don't know what that looks like for us. Maybe there are things that we need to read and remember and be reminded of.

37:18 But I do believe that we do not do that in isolation. But the way in which we kind of know the things that are true, the way in which we're reminded of what is true and what day it is, is that we engage with people around us. And when we do that, I think there's a pretty wild place where we're invited to do that in a way that recognizes the human created image of God and each other.

37:50 And in that, that reminds me of who I am. It hopefully reminds me of who you are. And hopefully also helps us know where God is in that triangle. Makes sense? Yeah, I don't know where that takes you all. If that's a conversation anybody wants to continue, feel free to let me know. Because I think all of us hopefully are looking for those places that remind us of who we are

38:20 and who God is and what's true. And it is far too easy to forget minute to minute and day to day. Let's pray. Hey Lord, thank you that you give us. You put us in places to remind us of who you are and who we are and places where you invite us to. Yeah, to remember and rest in that. I pray that some of those would open our eyes and open our hearts to some new places that may do that

38:51 in a deeper way for us to hear me pray. Amen.