Inspire

I recently enjoyed watching the finale episode of Neighbours along with almost 900,000 other Australians! It brought back a lot of fond memories of characters, storylines and actors who have graced the series over the past 37 years! I laughed, cried and cringed. This made me think about the past and the nostalgia we often associate with this…

John Piper writes;

The word nostalgia may point, I think, to something innocent and healthy, or something excessive and unhealthy. I don’t think it is a bad thing — I hope not — to have a fond, wistful memory of college days. For me to walk around on Wheaton campus is a pretty emotional thing. I, frankly, find it a kind of painful pleasure. It would be unhealthy, however — this thing called nostalgia — if you thought about those past experiences continually and felt burdened by the fact that they are never going to come again: a kind of paralyzing regret that it is all over and the best days are in the past. There is no future like it. That starts to be unhealthy. So what we need, I think, is a biblical vision. Or you might even call it a theology of the past.

So for the Christian, let it be said: the best is always yet to come. And I really mean it. I mean: for eternity, starting right now, the best is always yet to come for the Christian. So the future is massively important. We are people of hope, and therefore we do not live in the past. We draw thankfulness from the past. We draw life giving repentance from the past. We feed our faith and hope on the faithfulness of God in the past, and we learn everything we know and get all the wisdom we have from the past. But all of it is for the sake of this afternoon’s joy and this afternoon’s faith and this afternoon’s obedience and the joy of all eternity.

So, as we fondly farewell Ramsey Street, along with Scott, Charlene, Harold, Karl, Susan etc we look to the future and welcome what God has next in store for us!

Submitted by Claire Fisher