Have you noticed that some special memories never seem to dim?
Even during my eighth decade when old age keeps blanking out names of friends I’ve loved, I still recall certain experiences with incredible clarity.
I was just three on the Sunday morning when my mother had to take out our squalling sister and leave my brother and me alone on that third-from-the-front hardwood pew while our father was in the pulpit in a small Corpus Christi church. I remember it like yesterday.
It happened just three years later, but I can still hear the car horns and the cheers of citizens of Abilene, Texas, as hundreds of us (my family was in our dark blue 1941 Plymouth) circled the downtown square and celebrated the end of WWII on VJ-Day. Neither for my eyes or ears has that memory ever dimmed.
Space here won’t let me begin to relate all the experiences I recall, but some of them are more indelible than others.
I doubt that I will ever forget the night when my son Audell and I drove into Springfield, Missouri. We planned to spend the night there enroute to a preaching engagement I had in southern Indiana. What a shock we got from the bright lights on the cinema marquee! They told us THE KING IS DEAD! Elvis had died that day.
Far less spectacular but far more treasured is my memory of the morning when shortly after sunrise I knelt on my six-year-old knees beside my Grandmother Key’s small garden as she explained to me what she did to make each vegetable flourish.
You probably would expect me to remember the first time I stood beside Niagara Falls and heard its roar, or felt like a pigmy beside a giant redwood tree, or stared in amazement at the eruptions of Old Faithful. But those treasured memories are in a category that ranks far below my crystal-clear recollection of pre-teen conversations I had with paper route customers or with a host of much-loved relatives.
Those memories bless me, but some of my memories are even better than those. I hope I never forget how clean I felt that night after I was baptized “for the forgiveness of my sins” (as the Bible says). What a precious memory! And Jesus invites us to refresh that blessing every time we break the bread and share the cup in memory of what He did for us.
Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna Street, Amarillo, Texas. Contact him at geneshel@aol.com. Get his newest book “Our Shack” from him or from Amazon. His column has run on the Faith page for more than three decades.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Some special memories never dim | Faith column
Reporting by By Gene Shelburne, Special to the Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
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