God remembers: "He remembers that we are dust." What a fantastic revelation that is to hear that God remembers us. You and I forget the names of people we have met several times over. A year's separation and someone, even a dearest friend, is out of sight, out of mind. Time passes and ties of friendship are loosed. Memories fade, and our greatest heroes become nothing but nameless statues on the street corner.

We human beings forget, but God remembers us. Lost though we be in some far country, God never forgets we are there. He remembers that He has bound Himself to us in a promise of love and faithfulness -- in a covenant. He has us graven on the palms of His hands, says Isaiah -- our names there before Him. Even your mother and father may forget, but I will not forget you, He promises. You and I share the grace that we have a God who remembers.

God sees our affliction also. A group of tourists visited a monastery one day, and a woman among them noted that one of the monks had painted an eye on the ceiling of his cell, symbolizing the watchful eye of God. Looking at the painting, the woman shuddered, "It gives me the willies." God sees us. "If I say, let only darkness cover me," prays the Psalmist, "even the darkness is not dark to thee; the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee."

We are never hidden from God. He always sees us, hidden though we be in some dark valley of the shadow, or even in a cell of our own making. And why should that cause us to shudder? The look is one of undimmed mercy, the gaze of a loving Father toward His child. God sees that you hurt, and He sees all your suffering.

But ours is not a Father who is a cool, detached observer of His children. You all know fathers who, when they get home from work, do not want to be bothered with their children -- just leave such fathers in peace with the evening paper, or before the television set. Let someone else in the family be bothered with the hassle, the discipline, the crying in the family room. But our heavenly Father is the one, above all human fathers, who is willing to be bothered. He is a God who refuses to shed His burden of troubled care. He is a God who hears our cry, and who comes down, who stoops, to find out our condition.

In fact, so troubled is He by our pain, our suffering, our inner and outer anguish that He takes it all upon Himself and makes it a part of His own burden -- God knows our condition for Himself; he is the Father who suffers what His child suffers, the parent who hurts when we hurt. Have you read it there in the prophetic writings?

O that my head were waters,

and my eyes a fountain of tears,

that I might weep day and night

for the slain of the daughter of my people.

How can I give you up, O Ephriam?

How surrender you, O Israel?

Are you not my dear Son,

My darling child?

Hearken to me, all you who have been borne by me

from your birth,

carried from the womb;

even to your old age I am He,

and to gray hairs I will carry you.