REMEMBERING THEIR NAMES. REMEMBERING THEIR STORIES. Pts. 1-2

I admit it. I spend entirely too much time on the two 24 hour a day “Bash Trump and bash him good” cable channels. That being said, there has been an advertisement on CNN lately to promote their series about notable families of our time. In the last couple of days, the commercial has alluded to the Kennedys, and the announcer intones the words,

“You know their names, but you don’t know their stories.”

Which, as they say, got me to thinking.

Interestingly enough, a few hours after the ad appeared on television for the ‘umpteenth’ time, a social media friend of mine from England posted something interesting on her page.

A ten or twelve minute video filmed in 1913 in the Blackpool Promenade area; (wherever that is).

And throughout the black & white footage, multiplied hundreds of people can be seen milling about the streets of this ancient promenade in which people of that day and time strolled along, rode a horse-drawn tourist trolley, ducked in one or another of the non-descript pubs for fish and chips, and generally enjoyed themselves.

A young couple cross the street, smiling and aimlessly chatting about something personal to themselves. They jog the last several steps to avoid falling victim to the trolley. The camera sweeps to the left, and a middle-aged couple, and three or four young children, the youngest a girl of five or six, stare blankly into its lens.

And, as Billy Joel so often sang the words,

“And, so it goes. And, so it goes.”

Pt. 2

As the video runs along to its sure conclusion, numerous other individuals, couples, and families walk into the field of view in pursuit and completion of whatever plans they happened to have on that particular day and hour.

“You know their names, but you don’t really know their stories.”

Well, in this case, and as is the case with so many other ancient videos, we don’t know their names, and we know nothing at all about their stories.

And each and every time I happen upon a bit of black & white celluloid, whether it be the Blackpool Promenade, or a host of men, women and children celebrating the end of WWI, or, for that matter, the inauguration of Teddy Roosevelt, I think,

“Not one among the hundreds and thousands who walk and talk, wave or cheer, not one, be it man, woman, child or infant in the arms of his mother remain with us. They’re all gone. They ran out of sunlight on the singular day depicted in the film segment, and returned to their singular homes; only to get up and complete their respective business, again and again, for whatever time God allotted each and every respective one among them.

The youngest infant in the arms of his or her mother reached adulthood, married, bore and raised children, retired, lived and breathed his or her last, and were laid to rest alongside mother, father, brother and sister.

In the poetic narrative, Thanatopsis, by William Cullen Bryant, we read the poignant words,

“So live, that when thy summons comes to join the innumerable caravan which moves to that mysterious realm where each shall take his chamber in the silent halls of death. Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust. Approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

Afterward:

I think we should concern ourselves with the providential plans which God has for each of us, as individuals, and should be about His business; lest we maintain little more than regrets, and not lie down to very pleasant dreams.

I sometimes bring up the old home videos which my parents made on their vacations to their cabin in the Carolinas. Daddy is busy hanging a piece of drywall. Mama is cooking a hamburger on the grill. One of my father’s best buds is painting a window frame.

But that was then, and this is now. Each of these beloved people have assumed their rightful place among the billions who have gone on before them.

And one day, sooner than we can imagine, we, too, may find ourselves among the non-descript crowd on some long-lost piece of celluloid, and someone may muse,

“I don’t know their names, and I don’t know their stories.”

And though the world forget me, as a believer I’m convinced that my Lord will not only remember my name, but my story, as well.

(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 80. By William McDonald, PhD. Copyright pending

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