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“…we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18
Don’t you love old photos? I have photos from my mother’s album that are 70 and 80 years old. To me, they are priceless.

My late husband, who had children from a previous marriage, was a camera nut. He loved to snap photos of his children and told me a story about when they were small. He was having financial difficulties, and while he stretched his budget to buy film (remember film?), he couldn’t afford to have it processed. So he had eight or nine rolls of exposed film in a box, waiting until his financial situation improved.

One day his younger daughter found the box and wondered what was inside those little canisters. Looking for some privacy to explore this treasure, she took the box behind the couch and pried the film rolls open, one by one, pulling out the film in long, curly black strips, exposing them to the light that destroyed the pictures. When she was finished without finding anything that interested her, she left them all behind the couch and went about her playtime.

Of course, when her daddy discovered what had happened, he was grieved that all those memories had been lost forever.

Fast forward about fifteen years, to the year 1995. By this time, he had married me and we owned a photography business. Digital cameras were on the market. At that time, it wasn’t a “real” camera for professionals, of course, because it held no film, but it was the wave of the future, and my husband acquired his first digital camera. He took photos everywhere, of his kids, his mission trips to South America, the beach, the theme parks, and eventually for paying customers. The volume of photos overwhelmed our computers back then, so we transferred them all to CDs and external hard drives.

He passed away suddenly in 2001.

For the past few days, I have been going through all the old CDs trying to find photos for his children, and to my grief, the CDs have deteriorated until most of them are too corrupted to let me open them. My computer doesn’t read the old external hard drives. All those thousands of photos are lost forever.

Isn’t this a picture of our lives? We spend time and energy earning money to buy the latest stuff that won’t last when the things that are real—the things that last – seem old-fashioned and out of date. Things like the Bible, salvation, forgiveness, and love. In the meantime, everything we are striving for and lavishing our energy on, like the latest model car, the newest smartphone or up-to-the-minute fashions (and there’s nothing wrong with those things) – they last only a short time, then deteriorate and decay.

To what, then, should we devote ourselves?

“Dear Lord, open my eyes to what is eternal, and help me to realign my heart and mind to the values you would like me to live out. Show me where I am coming short of Your best for me and help me to follow Your leading.”

For His Glory

Cherie Williams (www.cherieharbridgewilliams.com)
TRBC Women’s Life