"Good Times"

I serve my church as a leader of the 11-Year-Old Boy Scouts in our Troop. Usually, we don't meet up with the older Scouts often, but two nights ago, we sat with them as they recalled several bicycle trips they've gone on, most of which involved flats tires, bike wrecks, and some injuries. After most of their stories, there was much laughter and the comment, "good times." One of the Scouts noticed this, remarking that most of the times they said "good times," they were referring to a time when things went wrong and someone either did get or almost got injured. These events could not have been pleasant or humorous at the time of experiencing them, but now they were good memories, and since that night, I've thought a little bit about how that could be.

Part of the answer is in chronological distance. The longer ago our past pain was, the less we remember it, so the memory hurts less, though we may still remember the funny parts about the experience and the lessons we learned from it. We keep some of the good, but over time, we lose the bad.

I wonder if the afterlife will be like that. In life, there are many experiences that go badly for us. These events are unpleasant and sometimes painful while we're experiencing them, but afterwards, we can look back on them and say "those were good times. They didn't feel like good times in the moment, but I can see that they were good times now." When we cross over, I wonder how much of our lives will match that description. How many trials and hardships, or even just mortal inconveniences, do we go through that we'll eventually look back and say "that was fun," or "wow, I learned a lot from that experience." It reminds me of camping. When we go camping, we purposefully go without modern conveniences and endure some discomfort, mostly just to experience it, and to spend some time in a beautiful place. When we think back on our camping trips, we might remember colds nights and mosquito bites, but partly just to laugh at the experiences. And most of us who have gone camping have willingly chosen to go camping again, so, with some perspective, the experiences really couldn't have been all that bad.

In life, we go through a lot of "bad times." We experience trials, pain, and inconveniences. But after those trials are over, we can look back on them and think of how much we learned from them, and even laugh at our own misfortune. After the "bad times" are over, we may look back and decide that they were "good times." So try not to be too miserable when you're going through a hard time. It may end up to be like a camp out or a cycling trip. Life may be full of "bad times" now, but I'm sure that many of them will look like "good times" later.