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.”

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.”

Read More