The Stuff Life is Made of

I love to reminiscence about life and look at pictures and the way things were. I love how just a scent or a picture in my mind can remind me of how I felt at a certain time in my life. I also love to daydream about what the future holds and make plans for fun vacations that I want to take or parties that I want to have. But life is really nothing more than memories and dreams if you don’t have Jesus to give you peace, hope and love.

And what about the bad memories? I wish that sometimes my past hurts and traumas would just disappear, but we can’t just sort through our memories and forget the bad ones or take them out with the trash. Sadly enough, it’s the bad memories that seemed engrained in our minds. It’s the bad memories that change us the most. But what we can do is take all of our memories—good and bad to the Cross and give them to Jesus and see what he would have us do with them. With Jesus, memories become your testimony that speak out power and encouragement.

And what about the dreams that don’t come true? The Bible says that hope deferred make the heart sick (Prov. 13:12). We all have a sick heart caused from things that we have hoped and prayed for that still did not come true. But with Jesus, dreams become your hope and future for a better place than this sick and fallen world.

So be encouraged. The stuff life is made of really is mainly memories and dreams. But the Bible tells us that "no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Cor. 2:9). Jesus came to give us an abundant and full life (John 10:10). When life is full of bad memories and shattered dreams and seems so hard and pointless, just remember that Jesus came to give us more and one day it will be ours!