A very clear and sobering thought came to me “I Am a Memory“. The thought made me stop and think about a memory to me is something in the past, but I am living right now. You are living right now reading these words. How can I be a memory in the present, I asked? A memory is something you cannot change because it is in the past. I can change in the present how could I be a memory if I am living?
My curiosity was at its peak about the thought “I Am a Memory“. I laid my questions to God and started the journey of understanding. As I always like to think it was God in the first place pointing out a truth that will guide into living a better life daily. Come with me for not only “I Am a Memory“, but you are a memory as well.
The dictionary defines the word ‘memory‘ basically as the ability to recall from what has been learned and retained. Memory is the storage of things learned and retained from activity or experience with the ability to recall that event.
Memory is a simple thing to understand. It is something we all start recording the moment our eyes awake from sleep along with the rest of our other senses. Our minds are recording and storing these retained memories daily. We can call upon them from our mind’s library anytime we like or at times we don’t like. Basically, memory is the records captured in the present we are living in.
Memories are also created through association. An old truck can remind us of a memory we had with our grandfather. A tobacco pipe with a sweet cherry tobacco or a cigar smell could pull a memory of our dad. A flower covered oven mitten may trigger a memory of our grandmother. A vase of flowers triggers the smile upon our mother’s face. Objects can be the association for us replay memories stored away in our minds. Memories recorded in the present taking on age as time passes by.
Our mind is a memory storage database for all things we encounter every second of every day while we are conscious. We drink in this massive amount of memories without realizing the volumes of data our eyes and ears along with our other senses have accumulated. You can easily recall right now looking in the mirror brushing your teeth this morning, what you did for breakfast, or the clothes you decided to put on this morning.
When we hear the word ‘memory‘ we immediately think of things in the past (far into the past), which is a true thought. You are right in that thinking. You know how you can be looking down at the end of the road, across the valley to the base of the mountain, or the sun setting on the ocean? I was looking at a memory as though it was in the far distant past. Yet, “I Am a Memory” in the present moment did not register in my mind.
A memory is not only far in the distant past, but a memory is created instantly after one second of time has passed by. Now, the light starts to shine upon “I Am a Memory“. A memory is simply in the present as each and every second ticks by it is created in that moment. Time does not stop even if our clocks, watches, or phones stop. A memory instantly becomes the second goes by making it the past right before our very present eyes.
You and I are living memories. We do not count what happens in every second. It is the same as we do not look underneath our own noses sometimes to see ourselves in how we are speaking or doing unto others. We just do it. Seconds tick by right now as they become fleeting memories.
All of us are a living memory within the seconds that tick by which explains the question God pointed me towards in James 4:14 “…what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” See how this is a very clear and sobering thought. Every second of life is precious. What we do inside those seconds count not only for ourselves, but others. It is mind blowing how quickly we become memories in the seconds we breathe.
The exact moment you left your house closing the door behind you saying goodbye to your pet that instantly becomes a memory of that day. The moment you said, “I love you, dad“, “I love you, mom” or whomever you are thinking of right now turns quickly into a memory as you walk away. In that very second could be the last memory you have of them. I say, God forbid, but this is a harsh reality of this life.
This has happen to all of us around the world. Those last fleeting seconds of living memories become all that we have left of them. You and I are living memories forming a remaining record in those around us and the life we lived here on earth. There is no guarantee of any of us living the next second. Can you think of someone who died unexpectedly at a very young age or even a healthy older person?
It is clear what God was trying to tell me and His desire for me to share it with you. I am and you are a memory living as a vapor that everyone sees for a little while and with seconds time quickly vanishes away into people’s distant past of memories. Just like the first part of that scripture says we “…know not what shall be on the morrow…” James 4:14 Our seconds of being living memories before all should be focused on verse 15 “…If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that“. You are a gift that God is shaping into a memory those in your world could be blessed until they join you in heaven. What kind of memory do you want to be?
Can you remember in school the students getting out their books beside and around you? Can you recall the memory of in the office hearing your co-worked on the phone saying something that made you laugh, cringe, or think that was bold to say? Have you caught your dad letting out bodily gas and him saying, “it thundered” and you replied, “I think the thundered had some lightning in it that struck an outhouse” smiling and laughing? Those are created memories in those seconds that now have become a distant memory created in that present moment.
Every second that passes by while we are alive becomes a memory, therefore “I Am a Memory“. You are a memory. You, yourself are recording every second of your present existence. Turning off the alarm to wake up, throwing the covers off, hesitating putting your feet on the cold floor because you don’t want to get up is a possible daily memory. Slowly shuffling to the bathroom to start your morning routine is a memory. “All seconds of time turn into memories” was God’s desire to show me and you.
We do things so quickly everyday out of routine and there is no focused consciousness of the memory storage of those events. We see people everyday out of routine and do not realize the routine of seeing and hearing them. We have living memories forming out of each second that passes by only to be realized when that living memory passes away do we stop to cherish them. Time is moving by quicker than we realize. You are at a age you thought you would never reach with more to come if God wills.
Do you know of anyone in your life that you just spoke to them that day or the day before and the news of them passing away came to your hearing? None of us know the exact moment a person we may know will pass away including ourselves. Even if we get a warning, the exact moment is unpredictable. You and I are memories living in the right now that could be that vapor fading away into the air at any time.
We visited relatives in another state and an uncle was having heart issues over the past few years. I had a feeling, which I believe was a hint from the Lord, that this may be the last time we will see him alive. So, I made sure to record the moments of laughter and the times together. He had a very distinctive laughter. We received the news he had passed away in between the times we traveled down to visit the family. He is recorded in our minds and on the video as a precious memory. We never know when a present memory will be sealed with all that is left of that person.
You and I are living memories for those around us. For we do not know the day nor the hour death will be allowed to touch our bodies releasing our spirit from within into all eternity. We have people who go to the hospital and we expect them to come out for we know they are younger and stronger looking in their appearance. The shock of them passing away seems almost impossible, but they did. How are you spending your moments and what are you giving your time to?
“I Am a Memory” is a reality of knowing our interactions with each other in the present will be all we have after they are gone and also it will be the only thing that we take with us into eternity. Sure, you may have objects from them, but it will be the memory of that object that brings them alive in your mind. You may receive objects, money, or land from them, but it will be the memory of them working using those thing that you will cherish.
When the hint from God came true about being the possible last time of seeing that uncle alive, it changed me. The thoughts of ‘we are saying goodbye to each other everyday‘ for the memory of the last time could come to pass causes me to have a humble cherishing present moments with others.
This is years later that the Lord is telling you and I that we are living memories in the present moment as the seconds tick by stopping for no one and passing by like a fleeting vapor. Does this make you think about the thoughts you have each second? Does this make you think about how you treat people every moment? Does this make you think about what kind of things you are storing in your memories to take before God presenting yourself before Him?
In this life we work hard to have a car, a home, clothing, food, and a life filled with other things we would like to have, but in the end we will not take the car, the home, the clothing, the food, and other things of this world with us. Those things will stay behind in this world with no memory of us and the new owners take our place using those things that were once ours. People’s eternal spirit are the ones the memories will be with not with the objects of this world that are temporary.
“Using people and loving things only lead to misery. Loving people and using things is the way it ought to be” were words from a song I heard many years ago. God’s focus was you and I. He did not come to save the world, but you and I. Saving us from the eternal moment we become when death strikes out fleshly body.
The memories will go with us before God and they will stay behind to those who knew us. The office workers, construction workers, school workers, and all other people we were around will be accumulating recorded memories of our existence. They will recall at times like we do the living seconds of the passing of someone as they go about doing physically their daily routines only for the memories to be faded from their present mind.
WHAT TO DO
We are all living split second memories. Death can and will remove us at any time from this life. You and I cannot stop from becoming a permanent memory some day. No more than we can stop time. “I Am a Memory” will happen every second we live. As a child you remember seeing your grandparents, aunts, uncles, mom and dad. You remember being the kid running around looking up to them. You remember being the teenager sitting at the table. You remember getting married, having your first child and now you are the parent. You see yourself becoming all those older family members the aunt, the uncle, the grandparent until you are the last one sitting around the table with children laughing and smiling.
You have the memories and you are the memories. You cannot stop from being a memory. The question is what to do about being a living memory right now before your family, friends, and strangers. What should you and I do in this moment as the seconds tick away from us into the some day distant memory? God lead me into the understanding that “I Am a Memory” and He is the one I will ask, seek, and knock for the answers of being a living memory. He will help us to be the memory that is pleasing to Him and a blessing to the world.
What are our Memories to God? Just like we have memories God is recording our lives in a book (PS. 40:6-8, Heb. 10:7). You are the title to this book and the pages within contain all of your thoughts and all of your actions. Thinking of my own book having all things written down is a scary thought to me. I am glad God will erase those recorded sins in those pages once we are born again receiving His blood washing away forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
ANSWER OF A CLEAN CONSCIENCE
Being born again erases all the sins of your past even though your mind will never let you forget your past. The memories will be there, but your born again present moment passing memories can fill up with His fellowship in prayer/conversation, guidance of understandings, and how to do things that makes God happy with you.
To get your book of sins forgiven you will need the greatest power known to all creation. Memories are inside our eternal spirit that goes back to heaven for God to open that book of memories to judge us by (1 Cor. 3:13). When we die in that instant all our memories and deeds will be eternally locked into place with no possible way of changing them as we the authors we be placed in the eternal location of our deeds and choices we made.
Our memories containing the words we have spoken (Mtt. 12:36) and the deeds we have done in our eternal spirit takes the power of an eternal Spirit to forgive them. All of mankind is born into this world with the nature of sin (Rom. 3:23). Sin came from an eternal source of evil and sin will have to be removed by an eternal source of good. An ordinary eraser cannot anything from your eternal spirit book.
The book cover is like your fleshly body and the pages within are like your eternal spirit with the recorded memories of your life. The recordings on your soul is written in eternal ink. To remove the sin filled records from your soul it would take another more powerful eternal ink remover to create a clean slate in you. God did this for us. Your memories can be forgiven, but not forgotten by you as a reminder of where you came from and to never want to go back. This is a knowing good and evil with the choice of making good the path you want to follow and evil to shun.
GOD’S BOOK
God created His own book to walk among us for the very purpose of saving our souls and rewriting our evil memories with good memories. The fleshly body of God was Jesus the man and the Spirit inside Jesus was God (Col. 2:9, 2 Cor. 5:19). This is why God had John to write “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jn. 1:1 The written words inside of Jesus had the pure eternal approved blood ink of God.
The Word inside the fleshly book cover of Jesus the man was God Himself. This did not stop God from being everywhere at once. This was the central focus of His eternal Spirit written Word of Himself that spoke creation in the beginning. You see, we were made in the image and likeness of God. God was recording in the memories of Jesus the man the way, the truth and the life we can all follow back to heaven to eternally stay with our heavenly Father.
Our fleshly body reflects an outward appearance of God and our spirit resembles an inward eternal written spirit of God. This is why we have a living eternal soul. The things that do not have God’s Spirit and eternal substance are temporary. The things outside our bodies are temporary and the spirit within our bodies are eternal.
God gave John the insight that God, the core written and thinking part of Himself, was made flesh, walked among us here on earth, the people of that day saw God’s glory through God’s created fleshly outward book cover of Jesus Christ revealing the fullness of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14).
CLEAN SLATE
Now, we have God among us to pay our sin debt to wash away our eternal ink debt of sin that is written in our spirit. The difference between God’s book of Jesus and our book is what was written on the inside. Our book has a memory of being born into sin and could possibly have the memory of dying in sin going into eternity. God’s fleshly book was created without sin in the man Jesus and has the ending death of resurrecting to never dying again having a pure conscience.
Jesus the man has the eternal written words of life on the inside to pay our sin debt by the pure approved eternal blood ink God created to have the power to erase the eternal ink of sin in ours. For all of us to be saved we have to allow the approved eternal blood ink of Jesus to rewrite forgiveness and our sin with the help of the Spirit of God showing us how to write good memories inside our books.
Our memories are written on the pages inside of our spirit and our bodies are the outward cover titled with our name. Jesus is the outward name on God’s given fleshly book to mankind with God Himself, the Father of all creation, on the inside of Jesus for the saving of our souls.
Jesus went to the cross to be crucified in our place where God trapped our eternal sin’s debt inside the flesh of Jesus the man. When Jesus died he took sin with him. His body was put in tomb to be buried. You can kill the body, but you cannot kill the written Spirit of God. On the third day when all the memories had settled for the death of Jesus, God raised the man Jesus free from the pains of death (Acts 2:24) maintaining a pure eternal conscience of oneness with God.
Now, the fleshly book cover of Jesus the man has a bought and paid for the sins of mankind with God’s Written Spirit in him creating a way for us to walk this life to creating memories of goodness, filling our conscience with the truth, and living every second with the potential of life and life more abundantly (Jn 10:10).
BLESSED MEMORIES
To fill our daily memories with blessings is to become one with God. If we join ourselves in the oneness with Jesus the link to having good memories for ourselves and those around us will be from the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. Can you imagine having God inside your thoughts telling you and showing you the value of each second you live? Wow! Jesus the man lived daily with God helping him to make blessed memories and showing us how to truly live this life pleasing to God. Adam and Eve failed, whereas as Jesus succeeded.
To start the rewriting power of God to erase the written sins in my life all I have to do is follow Jesus into a parallel death, burial, and resurrection written in the approved eternal blood ink of God. The wonderful releasing seconds of repenting of my sins with a never won’t to be like that ever again is the first step paralleling death on the cross with Jesus.
The next step is to apply the erasing/forgiving power of God to wash away all my sins remitting them. It takes the power of the innocent and pure eternal blood of Jesus to wash those sins away. When I go down in water baptism submerged with the name of Jesus being said over me applies the blood that is inside his name parallels being buried with Jesus invoking the power of forgiveness from God.
The last step is to experience being raised from the dead paralleling the resurrection of Jesus. This takes the mighty power of God to resurrect a dead sin filled spirit, which is us. If you and I come up out of that water praising God and thanking Him He might in that moment or He may choose later on to come upon you and I filling us with the gift of His Holy Spirit with power to speak another language as a sign to you and I along with anyone else that is around hearing us praising God’s wonderful works. This you will know you have resurrecting power inside your body as God as your Spirit roommate.
This is a scripture of an eternal promise written in the blood of Jesus Christ approved by God. God/Jesus gave this plan of salvation to Peter to tell the people of that day, the sin debt did not change nor did the sin debt payment plan of salvation for our day. What to do then is the same as what to do today to be saved and keeping a good conscience with God.
Acts 2:38 “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.“
1 Peter 3:21 “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:” Our flesh will never be a Christian because it is of this world, but our conscience with the memories recorded will live forever in a new eternal body.
Change your every second into memories that God, you, and others will be pleased with. We can’t do it alone. You and I are living memories. Why not have God helping us to write those pages in our life? You may fade with man, but you will never fade with God. May your walk with God be glorious and rich with understandings.