REVISITING THE PAST WITH THE HOPE OF FAITH

In this article, I’d like to explore how the sentiment behind our memories influence our perception of reality. My intention is to help us to live more fully by understanding the way faith in Jesus integrates hope and healing into our memories, and then our very lives.

THE SCENT OF REMINISCENCE

The scent of freshly cut summer grass holds sentimental value to me. During adolescence while mowing my parents’ lawns, I would spend hours upon hours considering my life, pondering the person I was and wanted to be as I listened to rock music on my CD player. Consequently, the scent of freshly cut summer grass gradually associated to sentiment and reminiscence. When I smell the scent of cut grass today, I grow pensive. 

During that time period, my thoughts were consumed with trying to understand the adversity of trauma and the weight of anxiety. The sentiment of the scent of cut grass wasn’t about the grass, but the significance of my experiences at the time the formation of those memories occurred.

A SERIOUS DISPOSITION & RENEWED PERSPECTIVE

Over the course of several years in my teens, many people commented on my serious demeanor. Given the circumstances at that time, I was very serious. There was a lot of emotional baggage on the inside as the aftershock of my parents’ divorce. Adding to my racing thoughts was the shock of the sudden death of my dad’s parents just weeks before my eleventh Christmas. I came to find closure as hard rock music took off the edge like a drug. This is why I would play music on the lawn mower while I tuned into my private world of rumination.

A NEW VIEW OF AN OLD MEMORY

Clearly, years later in hindsight, the scent has a different impact on me now. Faith in Jesus has given me a renewed appreciation for the scent of freshly cut grass by replacing a poignant reminder of the past with something positive and beautiful. Instead of the reminder of a painful phase in my life, cut grass is a reminder of a good, loving, infinitely powerful God who is on my side and wanting what is best for me. This is an example of how faith interacts with our negative memories, forming new associations by distilling hope inside the substance of sentiment. 

JESUS’ IMPACT ON OUR MEMORIES

With regards to faith, Jesus renews our ability to gauge sentimentality by refining the way we develop the forming of emotional bonds. Basically, Jesus reminds us of the importance of emotions, that we were created to feel, but that He created us to love; not to live in misery or deprecation. Alike the way we cannot fail in Christ, we can form healthy associations with memories by understanding Jesus’s love for all people impacts the way we view regret, pain, and failure. 

SETTLING FOR LESS THAN GOD

The cost of settling for human affections and expecting them to replace our need for God is the loss of fulfillment, ultimate joy, and a meaningful purpose in a dark world. If we can grasp the truth behind these words and the weight of their testimony, then as humans, we may have taken our first step away from agnosticism and the cynicism of Christianity, and towards the hope of an improved, renewed tomorrow.

JESUS CAN CARRY US THROUGH

Tomorrow only comes with the fallen debris of the past when we carry ours with us like baggage. When we let the past go into Jesus’s hands, all that’s left is the hope that if Jesus is powerful enough to keep our world from exploding or imploding (a reference to fine-tuning), dying and rising from dead, and carrying our past for us—He certainly can carry us through the rest of our lives—adversity, pain, confusion and all.

FORGETTING OUR IDENTITY

We have hope because of Jesus, and when we place that hope in our lust for any one or more things under the umbrella of this attention-seeking, status-grasping, social media-addicted world, we forget the importance of our identity; of whose image we are created in. We blindly set aside the eternal purpose for which we are called into by settling for the temptations of our body rather than the needs of our soul. 

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?

My hope is that we will choose to see the world through the eyes of Jesus, and that in so doing, we will surrender our baggage to Him by comprehending its redundancy in our future. Additionally, I hope we will come to see the importance and relevance of living for God instead of ourselves.

A life of blind selfishness leads to a future of disappointment. Giving for the sake of reward leads to a future of loneliness, bitterness, and an emotional void we’ll never be able to fill completely without God.

We weren’t created to feel like disappointments or failures, we were created for the sole purpose of experiencing an intimate spiritual relationship with God through Jesus. Because of this, we don’t have to associate the hopelessness of pain and misunderstanding to our memories. Instead, we can associate hope, understanding, and acceptance to each memory. Because of Jesus, we don’t have to settle for despair or deprecation, we can live into the hope of a better tomorrow, leading to a promising eternity. 

CONNECT WITH ME

If you resonated to with this article in any way, please write about it in the comments below, or send a message through my contact page. You can also subscribe to my blog, and/or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Threads if you want to stay updated on newly published articles. I also post shorter faith-based notes on Threads. Please tell me if there’s a topic any of you would like me to write an article about that would help you on your faith journey. May God bless you on your way!

Better

Shared at: Grace and Truth