547,500 - that's the number of words I spoke last year. Yes, I counted... Now I don't really make a big deal about the new year. I don't make any resolutions. Last year I slept through it. This year I was up, but not because 2008 was coming. When I got my hair cut on December 31, the barber asked if I was doing anything that night. Up to that point, I'd forgotten it was new-years eve...

Yet there's something about trying to remember to write '08'. It's not just hard to remember - it looks weird. It's a reminder of sorts that we're trapped in this forward-linear time. That, try as we may, we cannot stop or move back - we're moving ever-forward. So 2007 is a sort of stamp on many events, in a way, sealing them in history.

So I'm laying in bed this morning, thinking. Pondering the fact that even my thoughts, while I'm laying there, are being sealed in history (time is fascinating). Pondering the fact that the first moments of 2008 were already 'gone', sealed by history, only to be revisited by memory. Pondering the fact that I spoke approximately 547,500 words in 2007, for which I must give account. Words that, once spoken, could never be taken back - only remembered. Then the thought hit me: what if they're forgotten?

I forget things all the time, so that's no big deal. I don't remember most of the words I spoke in 2007. But someone does - someone's keeping track:

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. - Matt. 12:36

But what if He forgot?

Once a word is spoken, it's gone. It remains only in the memory of those who 'experienced' it. But when they die, the thing is gone with them. So a thing cannot be immortalized by mortals (thank you, it's been good.) The only way a thing could be sealed in history is in the memory of God. And what if He forgot?

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. - Heb. 8:12

And so 2007 is gone. The things I said and did, I cannot undo. What was left unspoken and undone cannot be changed. But fortunately, it doesn't need to. Because history's record of 2007 is clean.