Dimmed lights and a children’s Christmas cantata. A small paper bag of treats. Friends walking from church to our home. Little bodies squirming with excitement. A molded plastic Mary and Joseph and shepherd standing by our fireplace, holding silent vigil over the babe of Bethlehem. A box of chocolates passed around—take just one.

Memories of Christmases past may dance in your mind too. We all have celebrated Christmas. We celebrate Christmas every year. We cannot remember a time when there was no Christmas.

But there was such a time.

Our forefathers waited for the fulfillment of the promise

For many years the faithful in Israel waited for Christmas. They watched season after season pass, the promise of a coming king yet to find fulfillment. Many were young and grew old, not yet seeing the one who would sit on the throne of David forever. So many breathed their last, knowing nothing of the Messiah except God’s guarantee that he would come.

Abraham died. David died. Isaiah died. Micah died. Forefather after forefather died, and still no Christmas.

But no one needed to be sad. God had not forgotten. The forefathers had promises. And God always remembers his promises, even if he must remember for millennia.

God never forgets his promises

Do we give God’s memory less credit than we should? When hurt strikes close to our hearts, do we wonder whether God forgot his promise to protect us with his powerful arm? When we have prayed for his will to be done, do we wonder whether God forgot his promise to work all for our best? When the world gives evidence of hostility toward Christ, do we wonder whether God forgot his promise to bring this age to an end and in his glorious return rescue his children for an eternity of joy?

At times we wonder if God has forgotten. We doubt. We dare call into question his memory. We harbor uncertainty about the faithfulness of his love.

We can insult him. We unintentionally offend him. We can treat him as if he is the problem, when in reality it is we who are wrong. How just for him to treat us as our sins deserve.

Yet here is the one time God chooses not to remember. “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25).

He accomplished this gracious forgetting by not forgetting Christmas.