I’ve been thinking over all the quiet little idols that can cling to us in the depths of our heart.
I’ve realized there is one quiet little idol that can sit right in the middle of an otherwise faithful life and go unnoticed for years.
Nostalgia.
At first it feels harmless.
Even sweet.
A song comes on and suddenly you are back in another season.
A photograph falls out of an old Bible.
A smell in the kitchen takes you back twenty years in a second.
You remember little feet in footed pajamas.
A fuller house.
A younger face in the mirror.
A church season that seemed alive in a way nothing feels now.
A marriage in its early blush.
A family table before loss, distance, and adulthood changed the seating chart.
And before long, without even meaning to, you begin to look backward with more affection than you look around you now.
That is where the danger begins.
Because memory has a way of editing.
It softens the sharp edges.
It leaves the warm glow and blurs the strain.
It makes us remember a season’s beauty while forgetting how often, at the time, we were tired, insecure, fearful, stretched thin, or praying to get through it.
The old days become polished in our minds until they begin to feel better than the ones God has given us now.
And once that happens, nostalgia stops being memory and starts becoming an idol.
Scripture speaks to this far more directly than many realize.
You can read about this in Ezra 3.
When the foundation of the new temple was laid, the people did not all respond the same way.
Some shouted for joy.
But the older men, the ones who had seen Solomon’s temple in its former glory, wept with a loud voice.
They could not take in the beauty of what God was doing now because they were measuring it against what used to be.
Their eyes were full of the old temple.
Their hearts were still living there.
I can understand them.
I can understand the pull of looking back.
There are seasons in motherhood that I could walk back into with one breath if I let myself.
Not because they were easy, but because they were full.
I remember sleepy little faces at breakfast.
I remember tiny church shoes lined up by the back door.
I remember the weight of babies on my hip and toddlers underfoot.
There was noise then.
Constant noise.
Toys under couches.
Socks in impossible places.
Spilled milk.
Baths.
Bedtimes.
Little voices that only exist now in the recess of my heart.
The kind of life that leaves you exhausted by supper and sentimental ten years later.
And if I am not careful, I can stand in the middle of my house now and start quietly mourning it as though God has stopped being good simply because the season changed.
That kind of longing can sound reasonable.
But if left unchecked, it becomes a kind of protest against providence.
The same thing can happen in marriage.
A woman can look back on the early years, the fire and butterflies and novelty of it all, and slowly become blind to the beauty of the love that has matured in front of her.
She starts holding her husband up against a younger version of himself who existed before bills, burdens, grief, children, work stress, and years of sanctification had their way with him.
She remembers the feeling of those first years but forgets how shallow love can still be before suffering deepens it.
And church life is not exempt.
Some people become so loyal to a former season that they cannot rejoice in what God is doing now.
They talk about “the way things used to be” with a kind of reverence that belongs to the Lord alone.
The old pastor.
The old choir.
The old building.
The old spirit.
The old days.
I have watched people stand in the middle of present mercies while grieving a former temple.
And all the while, God is still building.
That is what makes this little idol so dangerous.
It robs us of the grace of the current moment.
It steals today’s manna because we are still thinking about yesterday’s feast.
It trains the heart to receive the present with suspicion instead of gratitude.
Ecclesiastes says, “Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.”
That verse has sat heavy with me.
The Lord calls that unwise.
Not tender.
Not understandable.
Unwise.
Because the question itself assumes something false.
It assumes God was somehow more generous then than He is now.
It suggests that His goodness peaked in another season and has been tapering off ever since.
But that is not true.
He was good then.
He is good now.
The old temple was glorious.
The new foundation was still the work of God.
The little years with children were sweet.
The older years are still holy.
The early marriage was precious.
The seasoned one carries a deeper kind of beauty.
The church life of yesterday may have been rich.
But God has not run out of richness.
Nostalgia becomes an idol when it keeps us from receiving the life the Lord has actually assigned us today.
And there is another sadness to it.
When we live too long in our memories, we often miss what those around us need from us in the present.
The wife becomes emotionally unavailable because she is forever comparing.
The mother keeps grieving the child that was and fails to enjoy the son or daughter standing in front of her now.
The church member grows critical, detached, unable to throw their heart into the current work because they are still mentally kneeling in some former season.
That does damage.
Not because remembering is wrong.
Remembering can be beautiful.
Scripture itself is full of remembrance.
The problem begins when we stop using memory as a testimony of God’s faithfulness and start using it as a standard by which the present must measure up.
The past is a terrible god.
It asks for constant attention and gives back only ache.
I think this is why Paul wrote of “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”
He was not calling us to erase memory.
He was calling us not to live there.
There is a difference.
We may thank God for former mercies.
And we should.
We may smile at them, cry over them, tell stories about them.
But we cannot build our tent there and expect to walk with Him where He is leading now.
The Lord does not call us backward.
He calls us forward.
And yes, forward often feels like loss before it feels like joy.
Every new season asks something of us.
It asks us to bury a former version of life.
It asks us to release what once fit us so well.
It asks us to trust that the God who was kind in that season has not changed.
Sometimes that trust is the hardest part.
Because some old seasons were very dear to us.
Some old rooms in the house of memory are filled with sunlight.
Some old versions of our life still smell like safety.
But if we are honest, some of what we miss is not even the season itself.
It is who we were in it.
Younger.
Stronger.
Needed in a different way.
Surrounded by different sounds.
Less acquainted with certain griefs.
And still, God has not abandoned us in what comes after.
He is here too.
That is what I want my heart to remember when it starts wandering backward too long.
That the Lord who gave me goodness there is still giving goodness here.
Maybe it is quieter now.
Maybe it looks different.
Maybe it does not sparkle the same way.
But it is still His goodness.
So remember, yes.
Remember the old temple.
Remember the little years.
Remember the church seasons and table settings and younger voices and younger faces.
But do not worship them.
Thank God for them.
Then open your hands.
Look around.
Ask Him for grace to love the season in front of you before it becomes the one you grieve next.
Because one day, if the Lord tarries, this season too will glow in the rearview.
And I do not want to spend my whole life mourning the present while it is still mine.
Biblical Womanhood
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