Nostalgia is a powerful force.  It’s more than an appreciation of a well-preserved classic car or the attraction of having a sundae in an old-fashioned ice cream parlor.  Nostalgia derives its meaning from the original Greek, which translates roughly as an aching desire to return home.

Most of us have felt twinges of nostalgia.  We have felt, from time to time, that we would like to get back to a time and place that we have lost.  Often, we idealize the era of our youth.  Sometimes we selectively remember a time period or a place in such a way that we forget about its deficiencies and hardships.

Sometimes nostalgia seems pretty understandable.  When we have lost something or someone, we yearn – we ache – to retrieve that which is lost.  Job expresses just such a nostalgia after the loss of his family, his health and his fortune:  “O that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me; when his lamp shone over my head, and by his light I walked through darkness; when I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent; when the Almighty was still with me, when my children were around me; when my steps were washed with milk, and the rock poured out for me streams of oil!” (Job 29:2-6)

Whether our nostalgia is the result of a deep sense of loss like Job’s, or whether it is a mild case of homesickness for a bygone sense of belonging and security, nostalgia exacts a price from all who indulge in it.

Being fixated on the past, yearning to retrieve days that have vanished forever, can prevent us from living as resurrection people.  God doesn’t promise to restore us to our gauzy memories of glory days.  God declares: “Behold, I make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)

Prayer:  Compassionate Friend, heal the ache in me that yearns to retreat to the past; and grant me courage to lean into the new thing you are creating in me.  Amen.