As my son and I were going through his photos from childhood, this week, I became keenly aware that those pictures illicit different responses from each of us.
With each picture viewed, I smiled, or laughed or sighed.
With each picture that my son viewed, he asked questions, to fill in the void of memory of the people, the place or the situation depicted in the image.
It surprised me when he didn’t recognize the house we lived in up until he was four … until I realized he was only four when we moved.
Or the dear friends who threw a baby shower when he was born … until I remembered that he was not even one when his dad started working at another church, and the regular connection to those friends slowly diminished.
Or photo after photo with his sister, just two year his senior, and he commented that he didn’t remember that they had been such good friends.
Or the comment, “mom, you looked (past tense) so young” 😳
As we flipped through picture after picture, he asked questions, and I shared story after story. These were shared stories, yet he held only a snapshot, I held the mental recollections of of the past times and places and people.
In essence, though we shared the same history of his lifetime, I had a view of a bigger picture than what he could see. I could see the whole, whereas he could only recall the most recent parts.
Psalm 139:13-16 is probably one of the most known Psalms:
“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.“
I looked up this scripture in various translations, and love how The Message words verse 16 (underlined, above):
“Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you”
It is a reminder of who our Creator is, how very intimately he knows us and that he has always known us.
God holds the photo album of our life. He can see all that is past, and all that is to come.
We only hold a snapshot of our life. Maybe we need to get out the album of our lives, and ask God to remind us of the past, so that we can walk into the future on the foundation of his faithfulness to us in the past.
itsawonderfilledlife 