Forget Not All His Benefits

The Feast

David addresses his own soul directly here, an internal instruction to himself, suggesting forgetting benefits already received is a genuine, ordinary temptation, not a rare failure. The instruction forget not assumes forgetting is the default drift, requiring active, deliberate counter-effort to actually remember what has already been given.

This is worth examining honestly against how quickly genuine gratitude for past benefits tends to fade once the immediate relief or joy of receiving them has passed. Benefits received months or years ago can be genuinely forgotten, their memory crowded out by present concerns, unless deliberately, repeatedly called back to mind.

Notice all his benefits, comprehensive scope, not merely the most dramatic or memorable ones. This instruction assumes ordinary, easily overlooked benefits are also worth remembering, not only the rare, extraordinary interventions that naturally stick in memory without requiring deliberate effort to recall.

Consider today one benefit, ordinary or extraordinary, that has quietly faded from active memory, and deliberately, actively remember it now, following David’s own instruction to his soul. Bless the LORD, and forget not, specifically, what might otherwise have simply slipped away unnoticed.