Erasing the past

So I was watching Men In Black on TV this weekend. I haven't seen it in forever. Good movie. I mean who doesn't like a movie about aliens living on earth and the secret organization that monitors them? Anyway, the Men in Black have this cool device called a Neuralyzer that wipes away your memory. So, if someone were to see an alien or something crazy were to happen with an alien, the MIB could just have the person look into the device and they would hit a button that would cause a flash. This flash would erase that event from that person's memory. It can erase away days, months, and years.

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to do that? Maybe you come in late for curfew and your parents are mad, so you flasy thing them and then you make up a story to replace that memory. Or maybe there was some kind of hurt, like being dumped, or your parents divorce, or an illness/death to a family member or friend. It would be nice to erase that type of stuff. Truth is though, no matter how much we may try, we can never erase the events that have happened in our lives, nor is it that easy to really erase the memories of those events. You may forget them for awhile, and they may not be as haunting to you after awhile, but they are never fully forgotten or erased.

Thank God for that too, because how would we know where we have come from if we forget our past? How would we be able to tell what God had saved us from if we erased any hurt or tragedy from our life? There would never be any appreciation for who we are now and who we are becoming if we were to lose our past. More than likely we would be stuck doing the same thing over and over again if we could lose those memories. What are you to learn from if you don't have memories, a past? Our past, no matter how wonderful or horrible it has been, is a blessing from God. It is a reminder that we are not that person anymore, that we are through that storm. Thank God for that. It is to show us that we never stop growing, never stop learning from our mistakes, missteps, and mishaps. It reminds us that their our victories and there are failures. In each of those, there is a message that God gives us to mature us, to correct us, to tell us He loves us. The memories aren't to haunt us, but they are to be a flag in our life that marks a time in which our life was changed for forever.