In The Wink of a Young Girl's Eye

July 7, 2022 | Jim Angehr

I’ve made it through graduation season, everyone! So many ceremonies and speeches from Collingswood’s high school, middle school, and elementary school. All good stuff, but I’m ready for a long summer’s nap.

Ubiquitous during graduation season is Green Day’s “Time of Your Life”–––not a song about high school, per se, but I assume that connection is that many of your best days will have occurred during this period. The time of your life: ninth through twelfth grade.

That’s not a notion that’s all wrong, at least in my case. I loved my high school experience: the academics, the sports, the extracurriculars, my friends, my crushes, our jokes, our schemes. I wouldn’t go back and change a whole lot, except that I’d tell my younger self to savor it as much as possible.

Still, although high school was awesome, I wouldn’t want to to do it again.

Unlike a friend I’ll call Robert. At some point during my 20’s, somewhat randomly I found myself back in my hometown of New Orleans for a black tie soirée that brought back together many of my high school running partners. (There’s no such thing as “business casual” at these kinds of parties. It’s wonderful!) Towards the end of the night, Robert––with whom I hadn't kept super close contact––and I were taking some air on a balcony when he did a hard pivot from merry to morose. Monsieur dé Sazerac may have been doing some of the talking for Robert at this juncture, but he began to opine along these lines: “Jim, high school was the best, and I hate that it’s over. If I’m being honest, everything’s been bad since. I’d do anything to go back to high school, and never leave.”

I was unprepared for Robert’s rather blubbery confessional and felt for him. Sure enough, he’d had a rocky time of it since leaving our alma mater. Nevertheless, I was only able to share with Robert my empathy, but not sympathy. My own time since high school hadn’t been pristine, but whether then or now I’d never wish to trade in all of these intervening years just to return to the pimples and practical jokes.

Here’s the connection point: after the ghost summers of 2020 and 2021, as COVID winds down, this summer promises the potential of genuinely feeling normal-ish again. But will it fully be like before? Probably yes, but also no.  We’ll have more freedom to gather, travel, and hang out, but it appears that at a larger level, life will remain pretty bonkers. National and international headlines will continue to come down the pike and knock us down. New disasters will shake us. And we’re only beginning to unpack and understand the ways in which the pandemic has malformed us.

When I consider this summer, I think of the elderly Israelites who in the book of Ezra met the rebuilding of the temple with mixed emotions. The millenials and Gen Z'ers were dumb, fat, and happy, “but many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first [temple], wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this [temple] being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping” (Ezra 3:12-13). I get it.  Similarly, this summer hopefully is going to be pretty good, but not as good as it used to be.

In my last blog entry, I commended the practice of God-filled remembrance as a bulwark against the hopelessness of our flattened present realities. Here’s a follow up question: what’s the difference between this kind of remembrance on one hand, and mere nostalgia on the other?

Don’t get me wrong; my favorite musical artist turns 73 this September. It’s possible that some nostalgia can creep into a Springsteen show. But he’s still the best there is at what he does!

Here’s where typical nostalgia and biblical remembrance part ways. The former looks backwards fondly yet at least a little wistfully or even regretfully. Glory days, they pass you by. True remembrance, however, recalls our pasts fondly, thankfully, and hopefully. Accordingly, in a faith-full way we recognize that in the new heavens and new earth that Jesus is redeeming out of the old by grace, the best is yet ahead of us. The apostle Paul reminds us that in Christ, we’re citizens of the heaven-to-come, and we await a final renewal that will descend from on high.

It’s a paradox, really: in my mind, biblical remembrance integrates past with present and future while tracing God’s arc of redemption forward. What’s more, since Jesus is crucified and resurrected, it’s a redemption that’s grace-driven all the the way through.

I love, too, how biblical remembrance accommodates and contextualizes sadness. With a hope of heaven in view, it’s so much easier to be sad in recognition that happy days don’t always last forever, and likewise to recall past mistakes and tragedies but without being crushed by them all over again.

Friends, press into God’s redeeming plan for the cosmos that centers on his Son. Were the old days, including older summer days, potentially better days? Perhaps, but they’ll never be best.

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