Growing up, one of the things the family of the Rev. Robert Mims did a lot of was pack
up and leave places. We moved from one neighborhood to another, from one state to another.
By the time I was 11 years old, I had been in 13 different schools.
In each move, something would get lost. Toys. Pictures. Maybe a dish, and on one move there was a loss than made my mother cry: during the move from Spokane to Wilbur, a tiny central Washington farming town with an even smaller church, my parents’ large framed wedding photo was lost.
In the past year, my son, Rob, and I moved Mom and Dad from Lilac Plaza Assisted Living to the Cheney Care Center as their health, and dementia, grew worse. Like all the moves before, this mean some things got donated to charities, others were put in storage, and a few treasured items were lovingly safeguard by family
At home in Utah, recently, I finally opened boxes I’d brought back. There were Dad’s collection of several worn Bibles, his notes in the margins of passages of scriptures he’d used in sermons. A pressed flower in the pages of one Bible, and in others, handwritten notes and reminders of events and people long since passed.
Then, in a box Mom had treasured, there was a bundle of letters. Love letters, it turned out, from Dad, written while he was traveling as a banjo-playing evangelist throughout the post-WWII Pacific Northwest. They were handwritten pages filled with endearments, dreams and love for the future they would soon begin as a married couple.
Memories. Memories Mom and Dad lost, temporarily I believe, as their worlds shrank both physically and mentally over these past couple years.
As I have prayed about their situation, seeking wisdom for each decision came about their care and well-being, I wondered what happens to those memories, when we … forget.
“Nothing is lost in Me,” was the thought impressed on my mind. Love is not lost, nor are our loved ones. The ripples of blessing we start with each act of compassion are eternal; so are those comforting touches or embraces we give or receive, the wisdom we gain and share, and certainly the faith we live and sacrifice for.
Mom and Dad didn’t need that wedding photo, as treasured as it was, to remind them of their love, nor their bond as man and wife, father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and co-workers for the Kingdom of God.
You don’t need “stuff” to keep those good things of past. We will always have our yesterdays, even when we forget them in this earthly life.
I know this: even if our memories fade with the weakness of age and loss of cognitive function, on that Last Day, Our Lord will restore those memories to perfection – and that will be a perfection that is no longer distorted by the false concepts of past, present and future we wrestle with now.
In the eternal, uncreated light of our Lord, we will have a God’s eye view. Nothing of love is lost. Nothing committed to Christ is ever gone.
So, I know where Dad is today. And, I believe he knows all about us, here, as we honor his earthly years, and we ourselves glimpse Eternity. I pray for him, and he is praying for us.
And Dad today knows as tangible truth what we believe by faith here: The perfect, infinite love of God includes, sustains and restores His children, as the prayer goes, “both now and ever and unto ages of ages.”
In our sentimental memories -- those photos, videos, letters, old Bibles, the contents of cedar chests and dusty boxes -- we have our yesterdays. But in Christ, we also have our tomorrows.
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