If God wanted Israel to know him, he could have sent a message. He could have written his nature on tablets and had it read aloud. Instead he split a sea. The choice was deliberate, and the science of memory helps explain why a rescue teaches so deeply.

What the brain remembers best is what it has lived. Researcher of memory Charan Ranganath, in his 2024 book Why We Remember, shows that durable memory grows from experience that is vivid, emotional, and consequential, the kind of moment you move through with your whole body and your whole attention. Facts handed to us as information fade quickly. Events we live through, especially events charged with feeling and stakes, lodge deep and stay. We come to know a person by going through something with them, far more than by reading their description. The shared experience is what makes the knowing real.

This is why testimony so often rests on a story rather than a syllogism. Ask someone how they know God is real, and they rarely recite an argument. They tell you about the night they were carried, the prayer that was answered, the moment a burden lifted. They know from the inside of an experience, which is the only place that kind of knowing is ever found.

Knowledge that lasts is knowledge that was lived.