Nostalgia

[280 words] Nostalgia has a selective memory. When we feel this, “sentimental longing” for the past we often remember the good times fondly and forget the hardships. Many hit songs use nostalgia as a theme: “Yesterday,” “Time in a Bottle,” “Those Were the Days,” “If l Could Tum Back Time,” “Yesterday When I WasYoung,” and many more. In fact, it almost seems that every other country and western song also stresses this idea. As Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3, “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven … ” One can imagine the pangs of nostalgia that Adam and Eve must have had for the Garden of Eden after being banished from it. The Israelites very soon were longing for the “melons, leeks, onions and garlic” of Egypt as they walked through the desert (Numbers 11:5). The exiles in Babylon mourned when remembering the…