I received a message on my phone a few days ago. It was accompanied by a terrible photo that made me cringe and the words “I am so going to use this.”
Daryl is our media director at church. He loves to aggravate me (better than he likes to breathe, I think), and I like dishing it right back at him. Shh, don’t tell him, but he’s really one of my favorite folks. Well, at least he was until Sunday night when I received the message and the photo.
He’d evidently been looking through archives of pictures from past church events. Photos from way back in the day when I still had young children. And, oh my, he had found a doozy of a photo of a woman with a goofy smile, glasses the size of flying saucers and terrible permed hair that was cut in a mullet style.
Unfortunately, I was the woman in the photo.
I can only imagine Daryl’s laughter when he discovered that gem. A flurry of messages went back and forth between us. I knew I needed to take action before that photo showed up on the big screen at church!
Following his “I’m so going to use this” post was my reply, “I will sue you for everything you’re worth. Oh, sweet mercy, that’s scary!” I could almost hear his laughter even though we were 30 miles apart.
His reply? “I don’t have much, but it’s worth losing.”
I shot back, “I have matches. We need a bonfire to burn that photo.”
Daryl said, “I take cash.”
I told him I’d send him some but I’d spent all of it on bad perms, huge glasses and getting my hair cut into mullets.
We had fun laughing over the moment, but you know what? Just like that old horrible photo, moments from our past come back to haunt us. What we wear, say and do each day is often remembered forever, whether it’s a laugh-inducing photo or words we said that took root in someone’s heart (in a good or bad way) or our example of living—or not living—for God.
We don’t have a rewind button where we can go back and live our past over again, but we can determine that from today on, we will live our lives in a manner that future generations can look back and say, “They sure did love Jesus.”
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)
PS: Please note that the above-mentioned photo will not be shared with this post. (Right, Daryl?)
