I’ve been sitting on hold for what undoubtedly is a world’s record, but I’ve put so much time in I hate to hang up. The music they are playing over and over is about to get on my last nerve, but I’m afraid to turn it down very low. What if they finally pick up, and I lose my place in line? That would be quite tragic!

     Every now and then the music changes to another monotonous jingle sort of tune, and I think they are actually going to talk to me, but it’s just another false alarm. I’m seriously turning it down now so I can think about what I’m doing while you say, “Well, thank you very much, because you are about to get on my last nerve too!”

     The past few days I’ve been decluttering and trying to find creative solutions for too much stuff and not enough space. The problem is I like my stuff. It’s not that I’m a hoarder or anything wild; it’s more that I am a sentimental sort. I can walk around in my house and see so many things that bring back memories of a person or place that I want to remember.

     I’m sitting in my chair looking at the piano that I recently salvaged for sentimental reasons. I loaded it up with framed pictures of my children at various ages, and I recently unpacked my Mama Ball’s portrait and hung it proudly nearby. On the other side of the room is a picture of my Daddy in his Marine Corp uniform. 

     The stuff that I really want to keep means a lot to me, but the problem is finding a place for everything. I know some people keep all their photos on I Cloud and don’t worry if they have a hard copy. I guess I am old fashioned, but I like to sit down once in a while and look at my old photographs. I have boxes of them, and that’s what I plan on doing this evening. It’s heartwarming to take each well-loved photograph in my hands and relive the moments they depict.

     I can remember so many details surrounding the photographs. I suppose I am a hopeless romantic, but looking at pictures on a computer screen will never thrill me the way an old photograph will. Times are definitely changing.

     We are hurtling toward a future that looks very different from the one I’ve loved so long. I’m not talking about a few photographs; I’m talking about a world that no longer honors our Lord and Savior and knows right from wrong.

     Hollywood is trying to sell us a bill of goods, but I will not be blindly led to a new definition of morality. There is only one truth, and that is God’s truth. If you want to know how to live don’t look to the world for answers. It’s all written in the Bible, and the days we are living in were prophesied long ago.

 Jan Penton Miller writes a weekly column for The Oxford Eagle.