I have access to almost 12,000 pics and over 200 videos on my iPhone right now. I don’t know, off the top of my head, how many I have already transferred onto my server at home and backed up on my cloud service. That is actually unimaginable and unmanageable. How will I ever finish organizing all of these and who will ever be able to look at them in their entire lifetime?
I was thinking about that as I realized the massive volume of memories that we collect today. I periodically dump my pics, sorted by month, into a folder on my computer, which is automatically backed up on a cloud server. When I have a little spare time, I pull a group of pics out, date and label them, and put them in an appropriately named folder so that any of my current or future generations of family can look at them and know, with some certainty, who, what, when, where, etc. the pics are about. If I live to be 250 years old, I believe I will finish this project, as long as I don’t take any more pics, which is highly unlikely!
My 93-year old father has about 10 or so photo albums of photographs (remember those?) that contain a disorganized history of my family, from my grandparents up to their great or great great grandchildren (I think). I have scanned most of those photos and have them mixed in with my pics, so those are included in my own pictorial history.
I don’t envy the generations of today that love to take pictures of their meal at restaurants, their new shoes, and whatever else they like to post on their favorite social media platform. Imagine sorting through all of that and dozens of copies of their attempts to capture the perfect selfie! Technology is a wonderful thing and we have a great tool to capture our memories with. If we can just remember where that certain pic is!
Colossians 2:6-7 (NLT) - “And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”