FADED PHOTO
I don't know her name. I have no picture to look into; no history to recount. All I have is an incomplete impression of her death. But that hasn't stopped me from thinking about her for the past couple of days. The threads of a thousand scenarios have woven their possibilities across my imagination since I was introduced to this mystery women through an off-handed comment from a newscaster earlier this week.
All I know about her is that she died recently, somewhere in England, at the ripe old age of one hundred and five. Apparently, they found her in bed, clutching a picture of a World War One soldier by the name of Billy. The image of a very elderly lady drawing her last breath as she clung onto an eighty-year-old photo, makes my heart sigh. What does it mean? What does it say? Does this picture speak of the unfading glory of true love? Is it the image of a lost love too tragic to scale? Perhaps it's a happy ending - a reunited love, long overdue. Maybe it's the tragic end of a wasted life lost in the trenches of war? Who can say? There are so many unanswered questions; too many fill-in-the-blanks, but perhaps that's what still has me connected to this women I know nothing about.
At the very least, there was love. Whether realized or idealized, there was love - a love that lasted from the blossom of youth to the fallen petals of life lived long into the winter. Did Billy come back? If not, did she find another love? If there was another love, why wasn't she holding his picture? If there wasn't another love, does this mean that her life was wasted? Did the overpowering expression of a love unrequited, shrivel up a soul eighty years before the body followed? Can a husk walk through this life that long before the winds of death take it away? Somehow I think not, but who knows!
Those are just some of the questions I've entertained over the last few days, but I dare not share any more of them with you because I don't want to reduce your pondering time. I want you to savor and sift through the possibilities. While you do, let me suggest just a couple conclusions I've drawn from this tale of a one hundred and five year-old heart:
First, love isn't as fickle or as fragile as our world leads us to believe. If a women can keep an eighty year-old love alive and focused throughout a lifetime of change and opportunity, then what excuse have we? Ah, I know what you're thinking, you nasty person you! You're thinking that it's easier to love the idea of what a life with a person would've been like. Well, that's sometimes true, but I can't help thinking that this lady would have traded places with any of us if she could have had, a few more moments with Billy. Truth is, love is a choice, not a feeling. Love develops, it doesn't fall in, or out! Finally, we don't grow out of a relationship, we give up on it.
Second, if this women could live one hundred and five years with one true love, one true commitment, even though the object of her love couldn't be touched, or seen, or heard, or smelt, then why is it we have such a hard time making a single-minded commitment to Christ? True, we may not see, or smell Him, but we have much more of a response to our love than this lady. We can speak to Jesus. We can hear His voice through His Word and His Spirit. We can be moved and touched and transformed by the power of His love for us. Finally, we have His promise that He will never leave or forsake us. Jesus may not be physically present with us, but He is far from being a faded photograph, that is if you make a commitment to pursue a relationship with Him.
It's my quest to live with Christ as my one true love. Some days, I lose headway on my journey, but each morning is a new opportunity to walk closer with Him.
When they find me, where ever they find me, with breath gone, and pulse silent, I hope I leave an image of me clinging to Jesus, not in the context of a faded black and white picture from my youth, but rather, in the deepened, full-color maturity of a life lived, and spent, for Christ.
