For most of us, the act of remembering or revisiting a memory takes us back into the distant past.  We remember people, events, cherished locales and details from days long gone.  Of course, not all memories are pleasant, and traveling toward the distant past can also resemble something more like a nightmare than a nostalgic trip down memory lane.  Nevertheless, even if we have but a few, all of us have cherished memories or times we periodically revisit in daydreams and remembrances. 

Nostalgia is one such way of revisiting these times.  It can be defined as that bittersweet yearning for things in the past.  It creates a hunger in us to return to another time and place, and lures us away from living in the realities of the present.  Nostalgia wears a shade of rose-colored glasses as it envisions days that were sweeter, richer, and better than the present day.  In general, as Frederick Buechner has said, nostalgia takes us "on an excursion from the living present back into the dead past" or else it summons "the dead past back into the living present."(1)  In either case, nostalgic remembering removes us from the present and tempts us to dwell in the unlivable past.  Without finding ways to remember forward—to bring the past as the good, the bad, and the ugly into the present in a way that informs who we are and how we will live here and now—all we are left with is nostalgia.

It is far from a sense of nostalgia that drives the writer of Psalm 78.  Instead, the writer recalls the history of Israel as a means of remembering forward, bringing the full reality of the past into a place of honest remembrance not just for the present generation, but for the sake of generations to come.  The psalmist exhorts the people of God to listen and incline their ears to the stories of the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, and the entry into the Promised Land: 

We will not conceal them from their children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength and his wondrous works that he has done....That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep the commandments (Psalm 78:4-7). 

Nostalgia is far from the writer's mind even as the sad, dark, and disobedient story of Israel is retold.  Despite God's great works among them, the people of Israel did not keep the covenant of God and refused to walk in God's law.  They forgot God's deeds and miraculous signs.  They put God to the test and did not trust in God's salvation.  They were rebellious and "grieved God in the desert" (Psalm 78:40).  There are no rose-colored remembrances here, no bittersweet yearnings to which they can return.  Rather, the darker parts of the story are remembered alongside God's long-suffering and loving-kindness—urging the people to think about this God in the midst of their present circumstances.  What had God done among them in the past?  And how might they now live in light of that past?

In the same way, when Jesus instructs his followers during that last supper together saying "this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me" he is not calling them to bittersweet yearnings or simply to remember events lived long ago (Luke 22:19).  Rather, he is calling them to live into the way of the cross and the way of resurrection, to remember Jesus in such a way that shapes all their living to come.  That is, he is calling them—and us—to remember forward.  Are we living in ways that both demonstrate a willingness to die to ourselves and reveal the new life we now have as a result of the resurrection?  As we remember and retell the story, are we helping others to experience life in this way?  Remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus, we give our lives contour and context not only for our generation, but for generations to come. 

Indeed, how are we remembering the stories of faith?  How do we tell that story with our lives?  Do we remember forward, bringing the stories of our past and particularly the story salvation into the reality of our daily lives?  And will it be said of us what the psalmist said of his flocks?  Yes, we your people and the sheep of your pasture give thanks to you forever; to all generations we will tell of your praise!(2)

Margaret Manning is a member of the writing and speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words: Daily Readings on the ABC's of Faith (Harper: San Francisco, 2004), 252.
(2) Psalm 79:13.