Amos 9

A Sieve

A sieve. Amos 9:9.

Do you know a sieve when you see it? If you go to the kitchen and watch mother baking a cake or biscuits you will notice that she shakes or rubs the flour through a tin thing with a lot of criss-cross wires in the bottom of it. That is one kind of sieve or strainer. Back in the old days, you would see farmers straining the warm milk through what they call a “hair sieve” that is to say, a strainer made of hair-cloth. It keeps back any specks or hairs which might otherwise get into the milk. That is another kind of sieve. Some tea beverages are made by with a sieve, by straining or filtering the tea through a “tea bag”.

Well, the sieve of which our text speaks was like neither of these. It was more like the riddle which the gardener uses when he wants to separate small stones from a heap of earth. It was more like that, and yet it was not quite the same, for the sieve of the Bible was a sieve for sifting corn, and when Amos wrote about it 2700 years ago it was made in the same way as the corn sieve used in Palestine today. It is a hoop of wood with a meshwork of strips of camel-hide. These are fastened into the hoop when they are new, and as they dry they shrink and grow tight, so that the result is a splendid article for sifting corn.

You see in Palestine they had, and still have, no threshing machines such as we know machines which take in sheaves at the top and pour out separate heaps of grain and straw at the bottom. The threshing machines were rather like toboggans with sharp iron teeth or rollers. These were harnessed to oxen, and the oxen tramped round and round in a circle over the corn which had been unbound and laid on the threshing- floor. These threshing-wagons cut up the straw and separated the grain from the stem. Then the chopped straw and the grain and the chaff were all collected and set aside in a heap till the wind rose in the evening. When it blew the workers tossed the mixture high in the air with wooden forks or shovels. The breeze carried the light chaff ten to fifteen feet away, the straw settled at a shorter distance, and the heavy grain fell almost close at hand. To make matters surer, the grain was lastly shaken in a corn sieve. And so we come back to our text.

I expect you have all heard somebody say at some time or other, “My memory is a perfect sieve.” Indeed, perhaps your father or mother has said to you, “Really, child, I don't know what is to be done with you! Your memory's like a sieve.” Well, it seems rather hard on the poor sieve to compare a bad memory to it. In fact, it is most unfair, for the sieve keeps what it ought to keep and throws away what it ought to throw away. So I am going to say to you today, Try to have a memory like a sieve. Remember what is worth remembering and forget what should be forgotten.

1. What are some of the things we should keep in our sieve of memory?

I once read of a man who had such a marvelous memory that he could walk down one side of a long street in Leeds and up the other and could then repeat in order the names and signs over every shop. That is one kind of remembering, but it is not the kind of remembering that I wish for each of you. What I wish for you is the memory that remembers the noble stories you read or hear, the kindnesses that are done to you, the love that your friends give to you, the happy days that come to you, and the blessings that God showers on you. Our memory for school work may be bad, and we may be dunces at French or geography, but we can all be clever at remembering things like that.

2. The sieve throws away what is worthless to it. I want your sieve of memory to throw away all that is unworthy of remembrance.

A little girl was once asked, “What is memory?” “Oh,” she replied, “that's the thing that I forget with.” I want your memory to be sometimes the thing you forget with. I want you to make it forget all the horrid stories and the unkind remarks about others that your ears may have heard. I want you to make it forget all the injuries that have been done to you, all the things that you have felt sore about. What would you think of a man who stuffed a pillow with thorns instead of feathers and insisted upon sleeping on it? You are doing something like that when you refuse to forget the slights or wrongs that have been done you.

You have heard people say, “I may forgive, but I cannot forget.” I don't want you to be like that. I want you both to forgive and to forget. Forgiving and not forgetting is man's way; but forgiving and forgetting is God's way. Make it yours.