Memory and Hope

Today is one of those days for looking back and ahead.  I look back for the memories and ahead for the hope.  It is a day many of us have noted with the passing of the years.  It is the day remembered in our family as the birthday of my mother who died during the worst of the covid pandemic.  Had she survived the last battle, she would be at her 90th birthday party today.     

When God gave us the gift of memory, He blessed us in a way that life in the past is lived again.  Of course, not all of our memories are good.  Some are painful and some we try to forget, but mixed in with the living of life are those which bring smiles to our faces and warmth to our hearts.  I am grateful for the mother God gave to me and the memories of her constant faith in me and her everlasting hope for me.  Today I remember the struggles which were a part of her life and the way she stood tall midst them, pressing on despite them, and refusing to let them define her or those who who were caught up in them with her.    

And, I am also grateful, deeply grateful, for hope that is a part of the present and the future.  Though not with us, she is with the Father in heaven and with those who are known as the great cloud of witnesses in the heavenly place.  In that eternal world she lives in the presence of others like her parents, brothers and sisters, and my father.  I do not completely understand the image of the heavenly witnesses, but it must be a joyous life giving gathering.  And, as she now dwells in that heavenly place, my hope is as yours and that is that one day when the journey here is done such a gathering awaits us on the other side.