Men, memories and monuments...

This is the current state of the Ampang Park shopping mall, the first mall built in Malaysia. Few months ago, it was finally decided that it was going to be demolished to build an MRT station in its place. Many of my friends were quite upset. They told me that they had many memories from the time they had spent there and were sad to see that place being torn down.

This got me thinking about the way we human beings treat our memories. We cherish them, and take every effort to hold on to them. We take thousands of photos and videos every year and spend a lot of money on gadgets and devices that would take such pictures. We would then take every effort to make sure we can store them safely, sometimes by having multiple back-ups on multiple devices, iCloud etc. And we get really frustrated and upset when we lose them due to carelessness, device failure etc.

We also love to visit places, listen to songs, read books that remind us of those memories and so when we see a familiar place being torn down, our hearts are filled with sorrow as if a part of us is being lost.

Yet, upon reflection, we would realize that one day all these buildings, all these places, all these photos would be gone. There would be nothing left of all the world we are living in. Ultimately the memories we want to hold on to so much would have no effect on what is to come. They would have no value to us as they would not affect our destiny. These memories we hold as dear would one day be irrelevant because the world in which we had them would be no more.

And once we realize this, we should ask ourselves what we should value and cherish instead. What would be of eternal significance?

Well, ultimately there is only one thing that has real value, only one thing that has real significance, only one thing that should concern us: Where we stand in relation to God. Once this temporal world passes into oblivion, there would be an eternity, time without end and we would be in either of these two situations: living in the presence of our creator, enjoying His love and grace where no suffering and pain or even sad memories exist, or being the object of His holy and righteous wrath.

The deciding factor is whether we trust in His Son, Jesus Christ who has redeemed us from our bondage to sin by His sacrificial death on the cross and His glorious resurrection from the dead.

So my dear brother, my dear sister, though it is natural for us to hold on to our memories and cherish them, there is ultimately one thing worth remembering: God has shown us His love in Christ, and there is one thing worth holding on to: our Faith in Him.