Kate Lucky has double vision.

When she sees children exiting a school bus, she feels like she’s watching herself as a little girl. When she tastes apple crisp on her tongue, Lucky finds herself wanting to prepare for the fall semester just like she did as a college student.

“Times were simpler then, when I didn’t know what was coming and didn’t believe it could possibly be difficult,” Lucky writes. “I just knew sheets washed by someone else. After-school celery spread with peanut butter.”

In “Go Ahead. Indulge Your Nostalgia.” Lucky writes about the simultaneous beauty and danger of nostalgia. Christianity, she explains, is a future-oriented faith, one that looks forward to the Resurrection and eternity. Our memories of God’s goodness or peaceful seasons are not intended to trap us in a longing to go back, but to remind us that something even better is coming.

When God calls us to remember, it is not calling us to romanticize seasons past. But we are free to engage in moments of nostalgia, so long as they are treated not as temptations but as gifts.

As Lucky puts it, “Scripture itself dwells on past marvels, treasuring the past for just a moment before anticipating God’s future provision.”

May the certainty of God’s goodness shape our reflections on the past, choices in the present, and hope for the future.