I have a defective hippocampus.  It's not my fault that I get lost more than I get found.  Janet tells me to come to an intersection, decide which way I should go, then turn the other way.  Now I know why this happens to me.

 

This morning's New York Times reports that scientists have recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a memory.  The hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain, seems to be at the center of things.  When rodents pass a certain spot in a maze, "special" cells fire in their hippocampus, forming the animals' spatial memory.  My "special" cells must not be so "special."  Apparently our memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most strongly when the recalled event was first experienced.  What your brain does, where it does it, it remembers.

 

I beg to differ.  While I'm no neuroscientist (a rather obvious concession), I think the experts got something wrong.  They may well have learned why we remember what we did on a physical level, but they have missed something vital on a spiritual plane.  When it comes to eternal significance, our neurons and hippocampus are no help at all.

 

The most important things you have done for heaven are likely things you don't know you did.  Consider Oswald Chambers, one of the spiritual geniuses of the 20th century.  His talks in college and military chapels during World War I were transcribed by his wife.  He died at the age of 43 without writing a single word on paper.  His wife later published his lectures and thoughts in books which still top bestseller lists today.  He had no idea that the insights he shared with students and soldiers would be read every morning by millions of people.  I have started every day with My Utmost For His Highest since buying my first copy in 1993.  I commend the experience to you most highly.

 

A few days ago, My Utmost contained a paragraph which was more about Oswald than he could know: "Be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water.  Be a centre for Jesus Christ to pour living water through…The life that is rightly related to God is as natural as breathing wherever it goes.  The lives that have been of most blessing to you are those who were unconscious of it."

 

Alfred North Whitehead claimed that great people plant trees they'll never sit under.  Your greatest legacy results from those times when you weren't thinking about a legacy at all.  You were simply following Jesus, and others saw him in you.  Are you "rightly related to God" this morning?  Eternal significance awaits.

 

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