Memories: Perishable or Cherishable?

Earlier this month, my wife Jenny and I celebrated our Golden Jubilee wedding anniversary. It felt like getting married all over again, as we walked into the ballroom with our “original” flower girl, now 56 years old. Yes, we are all 50 years older, but what a store of memories we have gathered over the decades!

Our 300 guests opened envelopes, each personally addressed to them, with cards and notes they had sent us over the years, with photos to recall memories of where our lives and theirs had intersected.

We paid tribute to friends who have journeyed with us, and I paid tribute to Jenny for marrying a poor Bible College student, partnering with me in ministry and raising with me a family. Fifty years!

Recalling memories over the five decades was for me the highlight of our celebration. I had rummaged through boxes of cards and photos to find the ones to drop into the envelopes. I shared that hard copy cards and photos are now a rarity as our world becomes increasingly digital.

When we were married in the 1970’s, Alvin Toffler in his book “Future Shock” had already warned of a world of transience—where things are used and discarded. Today, memories are perishable, events captured, messages read, then dropped into the cyber void.

C.S. Lewis offers a profound perspective of memories:

“When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.”

Yes, at the end of our life’s journey, or at any significant milestone like our Golden Jubilee, we pause and revel in friendship and memories. When all things pass, they remain. Cherish memories, don’t let them perish.