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Psalm 106

Aug 9, 2026    Gary Cook

What do the Lincoln Memorial, the USS Arizona, and the Flight 93 Memorial have in common? They exist so we do not forget. Psalm 106 operates the same way. This ancient poem, set against the backdrop of Israel's wilderness journey, holds up a mirror to a painfully familiar pattern: we experience God's deliverance, we are amazed, and then, almost immediately, we forget. The psalm traces eight stories of what scholars call the cycle of rebellion -- forgetting, rebelling, facing consequences, repenting, and being delivered -- only to forget again. The haunting detail is not that Israel was uniquely stubborn. It is that we recognize ourselves in them. The central question Psalm 106 presses us to answer is honest and personal: how often do we find ourselves in that same cycle? The remedy the psalm points to is not a program or a discipline but a posture -- remembering. Specifically, remembering the hesed of God.