The Lord's memory.
This is regarding God as if he were a man, and acted as men act. Men find the memory of kindnesses they have done become a plea for showing further kindness. To have ever helped any one gives them a sort of natural claim on us to help them again. So the psalmist, full of joy in the blessings God was giving his people in his day, felt quite sure that God must have been recalling, remembering, what great things he had done, in olden days, for his people. We think our great pleas to urge before God are our needs and our deserts. But these are altogether surpassed by the pleas we may use. God's honour, God's promise, and what God has already done for us. But herein lies an important distinction between God's feelings and man's. Only the very noblest among men fail to be annoyed when past favours are made into a plea for new gifts. We are annoyed at the beggar who comes again and again so hopefully, because he has so often come successfully. God loves to bless those whom he has blessed. We may never think of him as tiring of blessing.
I. WHAT MAY WE THINK THE LORD REMEMBERS? See two things.
1. The exercise of the passive graces purifies and ennobles character, and makes us more able to exercise them, and more anxious to find objects on which to exercise them. Do some act merely for a person, and you may find it tiresome to have to do it again. But show a kindness, be merciful, pitiful, tender, gracious, and you will want to be all these over and over again.
2. Every claim upon a man of truth is an establishing and confirming of his truth, and makes him more determined that men shall have absolute trust in his word. If it be thus with men, how much more so with God!
II. HOW MAY WE VENTURE TO QUICKEN THE LORD'S MEMORY? By telling him freely what is in our memories concerning his dealings. This is the way of love. The lover tells his loved one his memories, and that is the best quickening of hers.—R.T.