Where Memory Does Not Fail

Within the last few years, my aging mother has gradually passed on to me a cache of old family photos.  Some of them go back to a time prior to black-and-whites when the prints were antiqued brown-and-tans.  

The people in them are often folks I don’t know.  Nor does anyone else.  The place, the time, and the situation they occupied have all vanished.  I suppose when the pictures had been freshly taken, no one felt the need to pencil in names or dates on the backs of them.  Besides, how could anyone forget that beloved second cousin, that birthday party, that hunting trip?  Everyone knew everyone’s names.  

Until, one by one, they all disappeared, and no such living memories were left.  

It occurred to me that when no one knows the people or the context of a photo, it becomes worthless.  To me, it’s kind of sad, in the same way as when names dissolve off old limestone grave markers.  

When that happens, it feels as though human beings, each with an identity and story, have disappeared.  Their very reality had been linked to the memories of their loved ones.  Once memory failed, they ceased to exist.  And once names disappear, it is as though they never existed at all.  

Countless millions have lived and died in this dreary “circle of life.”

But they are not gone.  They have not been erased.  Their varied excellencies and evils haven’t dissolved in the cosmic ether of history.  This should be both a cause of hope and concern for every person on the planet.  For, past the point of your becoming one of those unidentifiable faces in an old family scrapbook (or digital album), you, and your story will still exist–in high definition.

Jesus said,

“An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28a-29).

Being forgotten in the world above ground only means, for better or worse, we’re getting ready to be remembered in the “world” that counts.  

Hopefully, those memories will include faith in Christ, and many, many, subsequent good works.    

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer

Featured Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

About the Author

John Myer is an evangelical Christian who likes to think as well as pray. Though he loves to write, his passion also has a live outlet. He planted and currently pastors a church, Grandview Christian Assembly, in the greater Columbus, Ohio area. He is a dad, a husband, and an expatriated southern man living up north. And by the way, he has a Master’s Degree in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

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