One day, a truck burning diesel fuel passed us, and the smell of the
diesel reminded me of two events many years ago. When I was a little
boy, some of my aunts lived on a road beside a big canal in the
Netherlands. Whenever my mother would go there to visit one of these
aunts, she would take me along on the back of her bicycle, and I would
spend hours watching the boats go by. At that time, these were
flat-bottomed boats which were used to haul cement, sand, manure, soil,
coal, and other bulk materials. It was a very good way to get goods
transported from one place to another. These ships were powered by
diesel engines, and whenever one went by, I could smell the diesel fumes
in the air.
Many years later, as a teenager growing up in the
town where we now live again, I was coming around the corner at the main
intersection in town on my bicycle. In those days, the Greyhound bus
still stopped there. There was a bus sitting there, with the engine
idling as the passengers got on and off the bus. The minute the diesel
fumes hit me, I saw the boats going along the canal some 5,000 miles
away, and me as a little four-year-old sitting on the bank of the canal
watching them go by. I had a real, genuine flashback.
There are
quite often events which trigger certain memories. That made me think of
Jesus and Peter:
Luke 22:54-55 "Having arrested Him, they led Him
and brought Him into the high priest's house. But Peter followed at a
distance. Now when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the courtyard
and sat down together, Peter sat among them." (NKJV)
Three
different people asked Peter if he was one of the followers of Jesus,
and three times, he vehemently denied that he even knew Him.
Luke
22:60b-62 "Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed.
And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word
of the Lord, how He had said to him, "Before the rooster crows, you will
deny Me three times." So Peter went out and wept bitterly. (NKJV)
Memories! What a strange sensation it is to suddenly remember the
past. All of a sudden, things will come back into your mind, things that
you had perhaps not thought about for years. I would not be surprised if
Peter remembered how he had denied Jesus every time he heard a rooster
crow.
We have many opportunities to tell people that we love
Jesus, that we believe in Him as Saviour and Lord. May we never, ever
have to deal with the memory of denying that this is so.
Prayer:
Our Father in heaven, there are so many people who need to know about
You and Jesus. We pray that we will always have the desire and the
ability to tell others about You, each one of us in our own way. May we
never have occasion to regret that we did not do so. We ask it in Jesus'
name. Amen.
Joel Jongkind Meaford, Ontario, Canada
Thanks to
PresbyCan Daily Devotional
