Remember this

Much to my shame I find the bible dry to read. I've read it all and upon rereading portions of it, I can't help but think "I've read this before." It's familiar and while 'familiarity breeds contempt' doesn't apply here, I could say that 'familiarity fosters boredom.'

Then I recall a sermon I heard about 12 years ago on Luke, Chapter 43, verses 42-43. For those of you not familiar (now I'm not implying anything) with it, here it is:

Luke, Chapter 43, verses 42-43:
⁴² And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. ⁴³ And Jesus said unto him, "Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise".

Here Christ is being crucified and is speaking with the thief that sees Him for who He Is and honors him.

Translated to the modern english, it sounds like the thief is asking Christ to think about him every once and a while, right? What else could he mean by "remember me"?

Dismember is a verb that means to take something whole and violently, or with great passion, tear it apart. Remember is the opposite of dismember. Today we think of 'remember' as making our memory whole, but as used originally, it means to take something that is broken and ripped asunder and to put it together and not stop till it is whole.

This is what the thief is asking Christ to do. To take him, repair him, redeem him, make him whole, and not stop till He is done.

Christ's response implys that the thief will be, there in paradise, in his entirety, before the day is out.

This blows me away. The understanding of one word, remember, makes this passage awesome to me.

I can only figure that the whole bible is like this. That if it is boring, it is my lack of understanding that makes it so.