By: Denny Hook

Recently I passed through the town that our family had lived and stopped at the cemetery where my parents are buried. It was hard to believe that my dad has been gone 29 years, and my mom died 8 ½ years ago. “It just seemed like yesterday”. I’m now 66, and I find myself saying and thinking that a lot as I look back on events in my life. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I first gripped the steering wheel of an 18-wheeler? No, that was nearly 50 years ago, and I haven’t let go yet. Wasn’t it yesterday when I met my precious wife? No, that was 26 years ago, and 25 years ago when our son was born. He is now married, and we have two grandkids, which all happened yesterday; I’m sure of it. Have we really lived in our home for 22 years? Is my favorite aunt alive at the age of 102? It seems like yesterday when in my early teens I spent my summers on their farm. Most importantly, it seems like yesterday that I surrendered my life to Christ and accepted Jesus as my savior, but that was over 35 years ago.

Why is it then that all these events that happened so long ago seem like only yesterday, but sometimes I can’t remember ordinary things past last week or last month. Don’t expect me to tell you what I ate for supper 2 days ago, what I wore to church on Sunday, everyone’s birthday and anniversary, and the license numbers on our cars. When I was younger, I didn’t think about these things, nor have the perspective on life that I do now. There appears to be a point in life we all come to when events that took place years ago seem like yesterday. I suppose one could attribute that to growing older, and I can’t argue that point. With age also comes forgetfulness. It’s like you go to get something in another room, and when you get there forget what it was. It’s frustrating when you can’t remember a name, a song, a phone number, and where you put something in a “place you’d never forget”. LOL Then, hours or days later it comes to you out of the blue.

Our minds are in some ways like a supercomputer with unlimited storage and able to process a gazillion bits of data in milli-seconds, yet still recall them after years of being stored there. We refer to them as memories. Our memories consist of information, pictures, videos, words we’ve said, words spoken to us, pain, happiness, and a whole spectrum of emotions tied to each memory. However, unlike a computer, God created us with the ability to reason, a free will, a conscience, and the desire to know Him. The information we feed our minds determines what we believe and the kind of person we are. Feed it with truth, and you live that. Feed it with lies, and that also becomes the filter by which you process life.

We all have memories, both good and bad. We all like to pull up those that were good and relive them in our minds. We even hope our dreams are influenced by good and not the bad memories. Sadly, there are memories that are so painful we would just like to permanently delete them from our history. Time has a way of helping us forget, or at least not remember them as often. Many people blame God for the bad things that happened in their lives, because He didn’t intervene like they thought He should’ve. Therefore, they try to delete and forget Him too. They may deny, hate, or claim He doesn’t exist; but death will prove them wrong.

There is that aspect of old age where the reality of your own death looms closer and closer; whereby, you accept the fact that the number of years you have left is growing smaller. You physically can’t do the things you used to do, and if you try; you pay for it with pain. Strength fails, hearing dims, sight is blurred, teeth and hair fall out, wrinkles come, joints don’t work like they once did, and memory wanes. King Solomon expressed these very sentiments in Ecclesiastes 12. However, he begins with the exhortation to “Remember your Creator” while you’re young. That word remember involves so much more than recalling a distant memory. It means to realize that God created you and has designed mankind to have a relationship with Him; that we are mortal with a limited time to seek and find Him, because it becomes more difficult in your old age. Someday we will all appear before God and must answer for what we did with our lives. What will you say? Did you live for God, or for yourself? Will you be ashamed and have regrets? The Bible says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth as people stand before God and realize they wasted their lives; giving up the eternal for the temporal. You’ve heard it said that when you die you can’t take anything with you, but the truth is you will have your memory.

As I wrote in my last blog, many people plan for retirement, but few plan for death. Planning for death is more than buying life insurance, making a will, distributing your estate, having a burial fund, purchasing a plot and marker, or even writing your own autobiography. Death is not the end but is the doorway to the eternal for everyone. As there are only two places to spend eternity, Heaven or Hell, and one way to enter either one, the question remains; Where will you choose to spend it? Do nothing and you’re still on the pathway to Hell. Believe that Jesus Christ paid the price for your sins when He died on the cross, quit trusting in your good works, repent and ask Him to save you, and He promises an eternity in Heaven with Him.

John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Just as in the game of “Hide and Seek”, death is counting to 100 and will soon say, “Ready or not, here I come!” Will it find you still scrambling for a place to hide, or can you say with the Apostle Paul that your hiding place is with Christ in God. (Col. 3:3)