TRAMPLING THE SOUR GRAPES

“I thank my God every time I remember you.”  Philippians 1:3

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hen I meditate on my cherished past experiences that I will very likely never get to repeat, I realize two important truths:  The first is that what I am looking at in the picture, whether it is an actual photograph I can hold in my hand or just a vivid sketch on the palette of my memory that I see with my mind’s eye, was just the first time I did that thing.  That moment frozen by the lens was just the beginning of the full experience.  Stop reading and just think about this a minute. 

 If you are like me, your favorite memories have been revisited over and over again in your mind.  I have rekissed my husband at the altar, rewalked the trails, reswum the oceans, retraveled the roads, re-eaten the meals, replayed the games, reskiied the slopes, rediscovered the waterfalls, reforded the streams, reheld my brand new babies for the first time, rerocked them and reread to them in the big, green recliner, and reheard each of my grandchildren say their first “Nana” many, many times.  Who knows how much I have colored the actual occurrences, but who cares?  Who’s to know?  As far as I’m concerned, the memory is more important than the reality, because the memory, not the real thing, is what travels companionably with me through the years. And that’s just the first important truth.

 Not only can we never lose the best part of all of our past experiences, we have also been forever affected, somehow eternally changed by each one of them.  By our experiences we have grown into who we have become.  So, this is another way we didn’t just eat those times like food that left us after a few hours: they are still a part of us, and not just when we remember them.  I believe that my mind that thinks and my heart that feels are for the most part composed of what I have taken with me from all those experiences.  I learned to think these thoughts in the way that I think them, to feel these emotions in the ways that I feel them because of all of my experiences.  These times whose loss I might be tempted to grieve are really not lost.  I am a walking reservoir of them, in more ways than one.  

We have no reason to believe that God, who has been faithfully growing us through the past, has plans to quit doing that now.  This might be a stiller, less exotic season, but I am confident, and I hope you are too, that God’s resources are not limited to the exotic and the expensive.