Memories can last forever in our minds. But they only occur for one moment in real time. And it can be easy to lose the memory in the moment if we focus too much on the next thing instead of the current thing going on in our lives.
I tend to be a person who always looks for what is coming next. This can be a real problem which causes me to miss out of the joy of the present moment. Then when the future comes, I tend to look back on what once was and then wish that I was more present in those moments. This truth has become even more real to me over the last couple of weeks.
A number of the students that I have become close with are getting ready to leave and go to college, foreign missions, or move to other parts of the globe. And I am starting to realize how much that I am going to miss these awesome young people.
For many of them, it seems just like yesterday that I met them. And now, they are going off to the rest of their lives. As the wise teacher wrote in Ecclesiastes, there is a season and time for everything. Seasons change. People come and go out of our lives. Our memories remain.
