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Fade I was listening to a favorite song last night
and I realized that it didn't convey the same powerful message and
mood that it did before. What it had originally captured wasn't
there any longer. So much of life seems to be like that. We watch an
amazing sunrise, hear a symphony that makes our heart leap, enjoy a
special outing with a friend or loved one, gain an insight into
God's heart, or even just enjoy the perfect cup of coffee on a cold
morning. There is something almost spiritual about these
experiences. Whether they are big or small, they make up all that is
good and right with the world and we want to hold on to them
forever. If you are like me, you have probably I don't have all the answers, but I'm reminded
that we are living, as C.S. Lewis put it, in a correctional
facility. Mankind rejected what God offered and God has let us live
in a world of our own creation, suffering the consequences of our
own decisions. The result is a world full of pain and
disappointment. We all have this deep innate sense that life isn't
supposed to be this way. Yet, in this midst of life's challenges,
there are these brief moments of joy that make our heart ache with
yearning and longing. In a sense, we seem to feel that this is the way life
ought to be. Perhaps God uses these brief views of goodness to
remind us of the world He intended for us, the world He is calling
us to. Maybe they are simply beacons in the fog, reminding us that
we weren't made to live here.
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tried to repeat many of these experiences by redoing everything
exactly as you did it the first time. Yet it is never the same
again. No matter how hard we try, we can't have them again. When we
can't recreate the experience, we try to hold on to the memories of
those times and relive them in our mind and heart, but these too
seem to fade ever so quickly. As a photographer, I try to capture on
film some of the amazing moments in nature that I've experienced.
While some of my photos convey a portion of that time, they soon
become just pretty photos that hold only a very dim memory of the
smells, sounds and emotions that were first experienced. There is in
fact nothing in this life that we can actually hold on to.
Everything, like time itself, seems to slip through our fingers
never to be held again. I can't think of anything in life that we
can actually hold on to and keep it as it is. Why is life this way?
Why do all the good things have to be so temporary? It is like all
that we see and experience is simply a mirage which vanishes as we
touch it. 