Trip Down Memory Lane

1 John 4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

When I was a child between the ages of 7 and 13, I lived in a small town which seemed far removed from the town where I was born and much of my family still lived, most especially my Daddy. Moving to this town was difficult and many adjustments were required, most especially regarding my Mother’s new husband.

I clearly remember the night we pulled into the driveway and I saw the house for the first time. It was an older home with a wide front porch and high ceilings. Culture shock wore off over the years and both the town and house became home. I came to love that old house and many an afternoon was spent watching life parade down the street from that big front porch.  

Just as quickly as we were moved there, we were moved away near the end of my 8^th grade year. We left in the night just as we had arrived six years earlier. I was so sad about leaving the place I had learned to love as home.

As an adult, I went back to see the old town and house. I wanted to show my kids the house and the lot next door where we played baseball and held football tournaments with our friends. There was no longer a large vacant lot on which to play. A business now sat there where barefooted kids with purple stained feet from mulberries once ran. I was stunned to see the house and couldn’t believe how small it really was. That massive front porch wasn’t big at all. It hadn’t shrunk over the years. No, it was I that had changed.

When we are beating back the flames of adversity, we experience the size and heat from the perspective of feeling consumed by the wall of fire. Our fear can take over quickly if we allow it and we panic. When we allow God to stand between us and the adversity, fighting in our stead, the flames are more quickly vanquished and we can breathe again. A remarkable thing happens, too. Looking back on the fire of adversity later, we can see it from a different perspective and realize it wasn’t the all consuming wall of fire we first thought it to be. The size of the fire may not have changed but our survival was directly related to the One between us and the flames. Our sense of confidence in Him grows when we reflect back on all the near tragedies He pulled us through. We grow from spiritual babies to more mature believers as we depend on our ultimate Fire Fighter and trust Him to save us.

Several years ago I journeyed back to the old town once more. The house was gone, nothing there to reflect the time and life I remembered. However, it was in this town on a street shaded by old oaks, while riding my bicycle home from school that God first spoke to me. It wasn’t the now familiar ‘holy tap on the shoulder’ I get but more as if one of those large acorns had fallen on my head with a ‘bonk’…and I received what I have described as ‘a knowing’ that I was to grow up and be a missionary. The significance of this is that I was not raised in church and barely knew what a missionary was. It was a moment that made a large impression on that 10 year old girl and the memory is as vivid today as it was the time it happened. I didn’t even know it was God at the time. I just ‘knew’ that it was real and I believed it.

 
Unlike the porch of my childhood, my God is larger than I can comprehend. Neither time nor fading memory changes any of that. His love for me and you is forever.