Pictures

Pictures--they can be a good thing...and they can be otherwise.

"If that's the way I look--I'm never going back in to town!" my husband's great grandfather is credited with saying.

I know how he felt. For years I avoided cameras at all costs, and as I told my dear son--now that I'm older and I look as bad as I feel, why would I want a picture taken now?

Still pictures are good. We have so many pictures to remind us of 'yesterday', of people long gone, and times that were better...at least in memory.

Memories are pictures too. They are pictures the heart takes-- and keeps. We try to 'capture the moment' with the camera only in a few years to wonder, "What was I thinking when I took that picure? I don't even know what the picture was taken of!" But memories whether good or otherwise, we know what they were taken of.

I peer at a picture of my great-great grandmother, Henri Anna. She is quite old in the picture, and so are the other two women with her. You would never see the memories, the picture is really only the sketch, the memories are what makes the flesh of the picture. You wouldn't SEE the young woman and her five year old son setting out for America along with her sister, mother, and father. Her father, Henry Ewert, never made it to America--but the other four did.

What makes us who we are?

"Mom," my youngest son says as we are perusing 'family crests', "I would like to make my own crest." He is studying Medieval history, and we are doing some family tree research.

"Well, honey, it's kinda like this," I start to explain, "If you don't have one now...if you weren't born with one...one handed down in your family...you can't have one."

"You can't? Why's that?"

"Because a family crest is based on deeds done in the past. It's something that you have to earn, not just something you make up yourself. It's on the order of a medal for bravery or...like a purple heart, you know. And both sides of your family have one, you see."

"That's kinda..."
"Yes, it is impressive, but," I caution him as I've cautioned others, "it isn't necessarily what is in the past, not necessarily what others in your family have done that is the important thing. The important thing is--what are you going to do? You do have a good heritage, and originally at least, those people earned their 'medals' so to speak. However, we can't do nothing (or worse do evil) and rest on their good works. Other people can throw dirt at your honor, but in reality only you can tarnish it or lose it.

Ephesians 1:11 in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; 12) to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ:

E’en so I love thee, and will love,
And in thy praise will sing,
Because thou art my loving God,
And my redeeming King.” (taken from 'morning devotions' on E-Sword from Charles H. Spurgeon)

1Corinthians 6:20 for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body.