From Our Associate Pastor: Memory Lane

In early May, I went to the Twin Cities to officiate the wedding of one of my college friends. Always the maximizer, I decided to make a road trip out of the ordeal so I could see as many friends as I could on the way there and back. As I returned to Lansing, I could hardly believe my efficiency! I went to a Twins game with the bridal party the day after the wedding. In St. Paul, I got coffee with my pal Jackie, and we reminisced about our college newspaper days. I ate cheese curds with my college roommate Claire near a lake in the suburbs of Milwaukee as we talked about grief. I gossiped about local municipal drama with my former co-worker, Sarah, while we toured the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. 

Needless to say, the trip was a major jaunt down memory lane. I went to college in the Twin Cities (Go Gophers!), and I spent two consecutive summers interning in Madison and Milwaukee. As I drove around these towns, I was struck by how much had changed. The dive bar I lived across the street from in Madison shuttered during the pandemic. The McDonald’s adjacent to the University of Minnesota — once an important respite of food and warmth on long walks home — was long gone. Milwaukee’s Miller Park, once home to the Brewers, is now called “American Family Field.” I felt a familiar refrain rise in my throat: “Things were so much better back in my day!”  

We do this all the time in the church. We get caught up in what was before. We daydream about days when the chancel was full during Christmas pageants. We reminisce about old programs. We long for simpler times when denominational meetings seemed less contentious. We sometimes get so preoccupied with what came before that we don’t have enough imagination to envision what might be ahead. Nostalgia clouds our judgment, and we have an even harder time letting go of the “good old days.” 

This isn’t to say I’m wholeheartedly against thinking about prior days. As Christians, we have to look at the past in order to better understand what God is doing in the present as well as where God might be leading us in the future. But too much nostalgia is detrimental to our dreaming when we think of the past as being more attractive than today or tomorrow. The past can bog us down and make us reticent to look toward the future. 

This sort of longing for the past has always been an issue for people of faith. In Isaiah, God says to our ancient counterparts, “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing. Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18). Our job as the church is not to forget nor romanticize the past. Rather, our calling is to continually remember God’s ability to bring about newness in surprising ways. 

May we perceive the new thing God is doing in our midst, come what may! 

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Haley Hansen