Nostalgia: A Sign of Things to Come

Some years back Google prepared a little celebration on their main page for Claude Debussey (1862-1918). It was a delightful animation honoring the French composer on his birthday. Google called the animation a doodle, wherein they recreated a moonlit trip down the river Seine while Debussy's most famous piano piece, Clair de Lune played in the background.

A riverside view from the period scrolls along, synchronized to DeBussey's sweet melody. The evening sky is star-filled. The moon is full. The boardwalk is lined with gas lamps. A man wearing a cap is riding a penny-farthing. A windmill silently turns. Rooftop chimneys puff smoke into the air keeping time with the music. A Model T jostles along. A covered riverboat chugs by.

It is absolutely charming. So charming, in fact, it got me thinking about the power of nostalgia.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the term nostalgia as "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition."

Nostalgia is that strange ability all humans have of remembering the past without remembering the dirty and devilish details of it. We, of course, are capable of remembering past events that include the dirty details, but that is not nostalgia. Nostalgia is remembering all the good of an event, of a season of life, or even of a person. Why? Because we long for goodness. We long for the world to be good, making nostalgia, even though it is about the past, a kind of hope.

Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century philosopher, and mathematician said: "Do you miss something you’ve never had? Do you grieve the absence of a third leg or the loss of a second pair of eyes? No. We ache only when something we once knew, held, tasted, goes missing.”

Our English word nostalgia comes from two Greek words: nostos, "returning home," and algos, "pain." Nostalgia literally means homesickness. It is that pain you have for simpler times when there were only three channels on television, and everything was rated G. Or the kids were somewhere in town on their bikes, and you didn't worry. Or you had long family dinners when no one was in a hurry to go anywhere. It is that pain you have for a world less crowded, less noisy, less cluttered, less complex, less dangerous - the world recreated for two minutes in the Google doodle.

Nostalgia is powerful stuff because it is a species of thanksgiving and of hope. Thanksgiving, because you see better now than when you took things for granted. Hope, because recalling life passages you have safely and joyfully lived through ignites fresh desires for security and goodness, which is akin to desiring the age to come where body and soul shall rest on Christ forever.

But as Merriam-Webster hinted, nostalgia has its dangers. Its greatest danger is that we would hope more for a return to a sanitized memory than to the future God calls us to. The danger for Christians living in 2024 is that we would amend the gospel with this codicil: "Come, believe and obey Christ with us and we can all go back together to an America we once knew and loved."

There is no Christ-following that will take us back to an America we once knew and loved. Following Christ takes us somewhere better. It takes us to where Christ is – to our heavenly country, our true home. As Thomas Adams once said, "Christ did not die to purchase this world for us."

In Hebrews 11:16 the apostle speaks to all who live by faith in Jesus Christ: "But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city" (Hebrews 11:16).

Those words speak to every Christian pilgrim’s homesickness. We weighed down by one great unfulfilled desire, not to be satisfied in an earthly past or earthly future. The homesickness of Hebrews 11:16 is not to be cured in this present evil age (Gal. 1:4). Its aches and pains have but one cure. Jesus. Though hated in the world, having no a place to rest his head, Jesus is now safely and joyfully home with the Father, seated at the right hand of the throne of God in our very own nature. We shall soon see him as he is and be like him and be with him forever. Home. Healed. Not Sick.

The Google doodle combined with Clair de Lune is a lovely thing. But may it, and all earth's pleasant things, not leave us hoping for the past but longing for the blessed hope that lies ahead. 

John Hartley has been pastor of Apple Valley Presbyterian Church since 2010, having previously been a pastor for 10 years in Vermont. He is a Wisconsin native and a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as Dallas Theological Seminary. John lives with his wife Jen and their five children.