On Nostalgia

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” ~Ephesians 2:1-5

There are some things that transport you back to childhood — windows of nostalgia. Perhaps it’s a smell that reminds you of something your mother used to bake. Maybe it’s an old family-favorite movie you haven’t seen in years. Or it could be a photo that causes the memories to come flooding back. Whatever it is, there are things that whisk us away to yesteryear.

The Apostle Paul wants us to have a distinctly Christian kind of nostalgia: remembrances that we have been transferred from darkness to light (Col. 1:13; 1 Pet. 2:9), from death to life, and all because of the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

Now, there are differences between ordinary nostalgia and Christian nostalgia. Ordinary nostalgia ambushes us; a smell drifts by and we’re gone. Sometimes we misremember the past. Think of Israel in the wilderness saying, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing” (Num. 11:5). Egypt had been full of bricks and taskmasters, yet they remembered the menu and longed to go back. 

But Christian nostalgia we pursue on purpose and for the right ends. Scripture is full of calls to remember: “I will remember the deeds of the LORD” (Ps. 77:11), and Paul tells the Ephesians, “Therefore remember” (Eph. 2:11). It’s through these kinds of memories that we experience the “joy of our salvation” (Ps. 51:12).

Think back to when you were new in the faith: reading your Bible hungrily, talking about Jesus to anyone who would listen, singing hymns as if for the first time. Over the years, familiarity can dull much of that. Jesus told the church at Ephesus, “You have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen” (Rev. 2:4-5). Notice the first step back: remember.

So what might evoke Christian nostalgia? Maybe a hymn you’ve sung since childhood or a passage that once brought you to your knees. Perhaps it’s the Lord’s Supper, where we remember and obey Christ’s command: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24). Each one reminds us of God’s covenant promises and His abundant mercy, by which we’ve been made alive together with Christ.

Some of you can name the day everything changed. Others, perhaps raised in the church, can’t point to a specific moment and may wonder how you can even have Christian nostalgia. One of the greatest things God has given us is the sacrament of baptism — in particular, the baptism of others, wherein we “improve upon” our own baptism. And we do this by calling to mind all that baptism signifies (remission of sins, regeneration, adoption, etc.), by remembering our great need for the cleansing power of Christ’s blood, by cherishing the reality that God keeps all His promises, and by a renewal in our hearts to live lives of grateful obedience to God.

So the next time a smell or a song carries you back to childhood, let it prompt you to look elsewhere in your past — to when God first made you alive with Christ, and that by His grace alone.

Rev. Kyle Lockhart, Pastor