There are some expressions that change from one generation to another. I don't remember saying this to any of my children and I don't recall hearing the expression used by any of my contemporaries, but I clearly remember my mother saying, "Now, Clayton, tie a string around your finger so you won't forget."

Of course, a string around your finger would be kind of hard to forget, and the logic of tying the string around your finger is that when you feel the irritation of the string, you will ask, "Why is that string there?" That will lead you to say, "Oh, I remember!" Then you do whatever it was you were supposed to do.

We are much too sophisticated to tie strings around our fingers. I don't know about you, but I have a pocket calendar in which I have space to enter my appointments on one side and a list of things to do on the other side. It is amazing how helpful it is -- if I don't forget to look at it.

Charles Dickens in his gripping story, "The Haunted Man," tells of a chemist who was deeply troubled with unhappy memories. As he sat before the fire in a dismal reverie, a ghost appeared and offered the haunted man the opportunity to have his memory destroyed. The man immediately took the ghost up on the offer and from that time on, not only was the man without memory, but he also had the dread power to strip others of their memory as well. Yet the gift was a disappointment. So great was the man's misery and so great was the unhappiness that he inflicted on others, that he begged the ghost to restore to him his memory. The tale came to a conclusion with the man offering a grateful and earnest prayer, "Lord, keep my memory green."

The Lord has a way of doing just that. Beginning with His chosen people, the Jews, God gave them reminders of what He wanted them to remember. He kept their memory green by giving them rituals, ceremonies, symbols, feast days, and festivals that would serve as a string around the finger. Passover was the time to remember God's deliverance from Egypt; Pentecost, remembering when the law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai; Hanukkah, remembering the dedication of the Temple of the Macabees following their victory over the Syrians under Antiochus IV.

God has done the same for the Christian church. Every baptism is not only a seal of the vows taken by parents for a child or by an adult for himself, but it is a reminder to every one of us that we are separated unto Jesus Christ through baptism and belong to Him. Every communion service is a reminder that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that we can be forgiven through His death and mercy. The first day of the week as a day of worship is a remembrance of Easter, the day of resurrection.

Christmas, too, is a string around our finger. It reminds us of the birth of Jesus, but if all we remember about Christmas is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, we have missed the most important lesson of Christmas. God wants us to remember a lot more about Christmas than the fact that it was a birthday. Even though there has never been another birthday like it, the birthday of Jesus is a string around our finger to remind us of at least four very important things.