[The night of which the passage speaks, the night on which King Ahasuerus was so far from sleep, was a very strange night. It was the night which immediately preceded the day on which the people of God were to be slain by the king's decree, the day on which the great pogrom against the foreigners in the land was to be launched. The dreadful commandment was, "Destroy, slay, and destroy all the Jews, both young and old, children and women, and plunder their goods" (cf. Est 3:13b).This was the night, the thin wall that separated half a million people from death. Everything was ready, the seal of the king's ring was on the edict, the king himself had retired to his bedchamber to sleep. But he could not sleep! "Sleep eluded the king that night." Behold, the mighty, dreaded tyrant, who commanded 127 provinces, could not command sleep. God commanded it. And if God said, "Avoid the king," the greatest generals, the most knowledgeable physicians, the most sophisticated anesthetists could not lure him out. "That night the sleep eluded the king." And how good it was that the king could not sleep, for it was this sleepless night that the Lord used to save his people in mortal peril. Sometimes there are nights when a man cannot sleep. He just tosses and turns in his bed, takes his medicine, hears the clock strike, and whatever he does, whatever he calls sleep, it just eludes him. It's a terrible agony, to toss and turn without sleep! But something good can come of it. It was not without reason that God commanded the dream to avoid the king.
Perhaps there is no day in the whole year when sleep is so much avoided as the last night of the year. A rather unpleasant and disturbing thought involuntarily comes to the fore at such a time, precisely what we used to say in our hymn on the night of the Old Year: 'Another year, God's appointed time, has passed away.' (Canto 280, verse 1) My heart always thunders at this hymn, as if a spiritual floodgate were opened by this thought, and a whole host of questions flow out through it. Such as: how much time is left of the time God has measured out for me, and now, behold, a year has passed again? And so the whole of life passes by unnoticed. Why did I live, what did I achieve, what was the result, was it worth doing what I did, where did I go wrong? Maybe I shouldn't have done it that way; what is my whole life worth?
Has this past year brought me closer to salvation? Not to death, for that is not the question, it has certainly brought us nearer to death, but there is a passage which says that you are now nearer to salvation. Such troubling questions also drive the dream far from man. Perhaps that is why many people do not want to sleep at night, because they would not be able to, as sleep would escape their eyes anyway. It is not because people are awake in such droves on New Year's Eve, because they are in such a good mood, because they are so fresh and rested, that they need to waste a little of their excess energy. Oh, no! It's because you don't like to be alone with the questions that come up, because you want to forget those troubling thoughts. Yes, behind all the New Year's Eve revelry and drinking, the instinctive defence of the frightened person is to forget.
God, on the contrary, wants to remind. King Ahasuerus also had to avoid the dream because God wanted the king to remember. Here we read that the king, "commanded the book of remembrance of the stories to be brought forth, and they were read before the king."-The Book of Remembrance of the Stories. Now, you couldn't find a worse soporific than that. There is no other thing in the world that so overwhelms the mind, that so heightens the restlessness of the heart, that so overburdens the already tired mind, as the Book of Memories. Yet, on New Year's Eve, there could be no better reading than this: "The Book of Stories". It is a book to remember, a book to keep the things and events that have happened from being forgotten. One that brings back to memory the words one has said, the deeds one has done, the sins one has committed. All the injustice that has been done. All the tears the man wept, all the happiness he spoiled. In the book of remembrance all these things are recorded. On sleepless nights it is this memory book of stories that tends to open. It is the book that one turns the pages of, wittingly or unwittingly. And as he reads each page, his heart is filled with great, deep gratitude or with frightened terror, joy or sadness.
Oh yes, it is the most useful reading on the last night of the New Year: the Book of Remembrance. It is also very enlightening, what is written about the stories we have lived together, done together, as humanity, as a nation, as a church, as a family, but even more exciting is the part of this book that is recorded about the most personal lives and things of each of us. It is not written on paper, it is not even engraved in stone. Oh no! That would not be durable enough. Paper could burn, stone could crumble. This memory book of stories is not something that can be destroyed. Every line of it is indelibly engraved in the hearts and consciences of each of us. If only we could erase it, like a tape recorder, what is not needed or what has not gone well! Oh, how nice it would be to remove certain notes from that book, even just a few lines or pages! Oh, how nice it would be sometimes, if just that one word that has made so much trouble, that has caused so much pain to someone in the past year, at least it would not be there! But it would be nice to rewrite some of the stories just a little bit, as if they happened a little differently! But I can't! What life has written is written. And it stays that way. All the events of the whole year, your whole life: your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your words, are all written down in the depths of your soul, at the bottom of your subconscious mind. That's where every human being carries within himself "the memory book of stories". And it is from there that the pages of that book sometimes open up into consciousness.
And then, on the last night of the year, mysterious servants bring forth this memory book of stories from this deepest repository of our spiritual life, place it before you, open it and turn the pages one after the other. And you must read! You are compelled to re-read words you once said, deeds you once did, events that happened to you, detailed records of joys and pains you once caused. Just as it happened to Ahasuerus on that sleepless night when the things written in his book of stories were "read before the king". Yes, that's how it's good to spend the last night of a year, even the whole night, reading carefully, carefully everything, everything that was written in the memory book of stories. It's a great read at this time of year! You're sure to find tear-jerking pages in it that speak of God's caring love, blessing and help. Read these "stories" aloud at home, so that your children can hear and your family can respond to the words of the psalm, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all my soul to his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his good deeds." (Psalm 103:1-2) There may be dark pages in the book of remembrance, pages filled with great sorrows, sad and sorrowful events, which, when read, will open up old wounds. And then there will be more pages, with heinous sins, sordid deeds committed in secret, perhaps stolen pleasures that would not bear publicity. Especially these pages, do not scan them superficially, do not hurry them away, read them, read them, until you too fall where that biblical publican [tax collector], beating his breast, begged, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!"
I am convinced, for I know from my own experience, that when one reads through the pages of the book of stories which are thus opened to him on the last night of a year, with real earnestness and honesty, he will necessarily come at last to the point where he can say with full sincerity the first question of the Lord's Supper: "I believe and confess that I am from all eternity a weak, fallible, sinful man, who cannot stand in my own strength before the judgment seat of God, and that I deserve punishment, death and damnation."
Oh, how terrible it would be if that were the only thing in that book of stories, the only thing I did, said, failed to do. But thank the Lord, there is more! What the Lord has done for me and with me. Just read in it how many times He called you, how many times He offered forgiveness, grace, how many times He reached out to you, how many times you heard that precious name: Jesus. Look again, it is written on every page, written across everything, as if in God's own handwriting: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love'. (Jer 31,3b) It still applies to you, what is written over and over again on so many pages of your memory: 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' (Jn 3,16) Still valid for you is that encouragement which you also remember, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine" (Is 43,1b) Still valid for you is that divine word which, at this time of year, at the end of the year, is needed more than ever by the man who turns the pages of the book of remembrance. (1 John 1:7b) Isn't that in your book of remembrance too? Well, take hold of it, for it is the only resting-place in the waves of time!
I once read a story about an old man who, when he was dying, asked his little grandson to read the Bible to him. The little girl began. The longer she read, the more anxious the old man became. The more he read, the more he began to see in a clearer light all the sins that had almost blocked his way to eternity. "Is that really what it says there, my little girl?" he asked briskly. "Then read it again," said the old man. "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." The old man sat up, "Did you read it right, is that really what it says? Read it again!" The little girl read it again, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." The old man said: "Put my hand on this word and tell all the members of the family that I will die believing in this word." And he died completely reconciled.
When you have read through the book of stories, lay your hand on this promise of God: "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." In this faith, let this year pass, and so let the New Year begin with a clean slate.
Amen
Date: 31 December 1959 (New Year's Eve).