I think I have a pretty good memory, but I’d be the first to admit that I can be as forgetful as the rest of us. This became clear to me the other day when I met a former pupil and I found myself chatting about the ‘good old days’ when I was fresh out of university. We are both looking a little bit older now, and she is wearing a little bit better than me. But then, she does have an age advantage.

All was going well until she asked me if I remembered ‘Mandy.’ I said I did - vaguely - and so she decided to refresh my memory. “You can’t forget Mandy,” she said. “Mandy was the girl with the amazing voice, the girl you would get to sing to the class in the middle of a double history lesson to give us a bit of a break.”

I couldn’t, and I still can’t remember doing that even though I reckon it was a pretty creative way of keeping a class attentive. (I guess I’d never get away with it today). Ah well those were the days my friend … why did they ever end?

But it’s not just individuals who can forget. Communities can lose touch with their past too which is why we should never allow such atrocities as the Holocaust to slide into forgetful oblivion. It’s what drove me to become a history teacher and continues to drive me now, even though I’m a Baptist Pastor. I love history and can readily identify with the Spanish philosopher George Santayana who once observed that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Or to put it more simply, those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.

David Smith made this very point in a recent newspaper article in which he argued very convincingly that: “It’s vital that we teach the young how low Britain fell in the 1970s.”

“Many older voters,” he wrote, “shaking their heads in disbelief at last month’s election, could not understand how Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, proposing similarly disastrous policies to those that took Britain to the edge of the abyss in the 1970s could have done so well and would be the favourite to win another election.”

Those of us who lived through the 1970s can only agree with Smith’s insightful sentiments and applaud his determination to ensure that the mistakes of that awful decade should never be repeated.

But we would be wise and do more than avoid the pitfalls of the past. We would do well to remember the blessings of the past too. I wonder for example, how many people in Wales today know anything at all about the last outstanding move of God, commonly known as ‘The 1904 Revival?’ It was an amazing time, a time when people flocked to church because they had become aware of the transforming love of God. But they did more than flock to church, they embraced a new way of life too, a way of life that saw magistrates’ courts empty, debts paid and drunken behavior disappear. We seem to have forgotten what happened in Wales in 1904 and we are all the poorer for it.

We seem to have collectively forgotten the ways in which God helped us as a nation during the Second World War too. Some might speak of coincidence many of us will argue that God answered our prayers to such an extent that even the great Winston Churchill could talk of a ‘divine hand’ that frequently ‘interfered’ on our behalf.

Those who forget their past are not only in danger of making the same mistakes. They run the risk of missing out on all sorts of blessings too.

Rob James is a Baptist Pastor broadcaster and writer who currently operates as a church and media consultant for the Evangelical Alliance Wales. He is available for preaching and teaching throughout Wales and can be contacted at [email protected]