What makes a memory happy or sad? I assure you that it is not the event itself that makes it happy or sad. It is the EVENTUAL state that either makes it happy or sad. What do I mean?

Think of a certain happy memory. I’m thinking of my honeymoon with my wife to Maul 11 years ago. I remember it fondly and often, and time to time look at the pictures we’ve taken to revisit the event. However, imagine if Janet and I were divorced. Would I still think of our honeymoon the same way? No. What used to be a happy memory would turn into a memory that will cause sadness and give bitter taste to the mouth.

For those of us who will end up in heaven, all of our bitter and sad memories will turn into happy ones. Have we been saddened by a loss of a loved one? We will realize that they were preserved and kept for heaven so that we will see them in their glorious state! It’s like watching a movie that you know has a happy ending. Even hardships and difficulties in the middle will contribute to the happy ending in the end.

But hell works that way too except the opposite. Hell will turn all of our happy memories into bitter and sad ones. All the good memories with a loved one who later has betrayed us will turn into bitter memories….

By the way, I didn’t think of this myself. I got it from C.S. Lewis: “Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory… [on the other hand] damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”

But who’s C.S. Lewis unless he got it from the Bible?
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create.”
Isaiah 65:17-18

Don’t go to hell. Go to heaven. Give up everything if you have to so that your name is written in the book of life. Nothing is more important.

PH