Somebody asked me recently how long I had been singing and playing the guitar. Puzzled at this, I asked them if they had mistaken for someone else. “No,” they said, “we have a photo of you.” Sure enough, they produced a 30-year-old picture of me, sitting with a guitar in hand, and most certainly looking the part. But sadly, my ability to look the part was the only authentic thing about it. It was at about the time that that picture was taken, despite very hard work on my part, that I realised that my inability to keep a beat was a major hindrance to my prospects of stardom.
Memories, like photos, are snapshots of the past. Some real, some mistaken, and some contrived.
And like photos, some are to be treasured, copied, and distributed, but others preferably consigned to the dustbin of history.
We all do silly things that we do not want to be remembered for. Those are the images that we would prefer to have faded away over the years. Unfortunately, we do not have all the negatives, and one cringes to think that your face has been added to someone’s album of regret. Worst still is that some even send out for reprints to keep the unhappy memories fresh in their minds.
The Christian’s heart must be like the Gallery of Godliness in Hebrews chapter eleven. Such a space is devoid of cheap two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs of man’s making. Instead, therein hangs the rich, deep portraits of faithful men and women of God’s making.
Though different in so many ways, they all bear a family resemblance. The same family resemblance that we long to bear—that of sons and daughters of God.
When we have grown in Christ, cannot account for the past image that someone may be preserving of us in their heart. But we must account for how we have framed them and bring the beauty of Christ into the picture.
But most importantly, the image we want to project to the world is the one that Christ forms are we fix our gaze upon him:
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
John Staiger
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