As oxymoronic as it sounds, my own Village of Winfield has celebrated its Good Old Days for 58 years. I don’t know if there is a consensus on which of those years were better than others, but another celebration is scheduled to take place the first weekend in September. Maybe September 6 and 7 will be the new good old days.

The idiom “good old days” is subjective. It describes our personal “Golden Age” that we remember as good and pleasant and better than the present time. It’s not a negative to remember, especially as people who belong to a God who remembers and who calls us to remember.

But remember what? If it were up to my selective memory, it would only be blessings, only positive outcomes to my prayers, only the best of my life. Our confession of remembering, however, isn’t always in the context of the good old days.

In Exodus 13:3, Moses told the children of Israel to remember a day of blood from unblemished lambs on door posts, of a meal quickly eaten with belts fastened and sandals on their feet, and of a night filled with weeping and wailing. Certainly not a good old day I would want to remember, but God’s people were to remember this day because it was “this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place.” (Exod. 13:3) This was a day not to remember because of warm fuzzy feelings but because of what God was about to do—deliver his people from Egypt. (It was when God’s people longed for the good old days in Egypt when they ate fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic that they got in trouble. Although my husband can relate to anyone who longs for any food in the allium family)

When the psalmist in Psalm 42 describes his tears as food for night and day and his soul as cast down and in turmoil, he remembers. He remembers the good old days of joyful and loud worship of God, who commands his steadfast love, whose song is there in the weepy night. This is the remembering that brings hope.

Then we see Jesus on the eve of his death—breaking bread, pouring wine, giving it to friends and the betrayer, calling them to remember—not just the miracles and the teachings, and certainly not the recent round of hosannas, but to remember what he is about to do: “This is my body, which is for you. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25)

His body broken, his blood spilled—this is our confession of remembering. We don’t remember in the context of our personal golden age, but we remember in community now and in hope for what is to come, now and forever, because of Jesus.