Searching For Eternity

Making sense of nostalgia and my longing for "the good old days".

As the years go by, my heart increasingly feels like a heavy box of dusty trinkets. I carry with me, former treasures of faded film, old mixtapes, and vanishing ink of stories untold. While Wisdom calls me to plan for my future, I tend to find comfort and solace in the past.

I miss the old days—simpler seasons untouched by technology, where happiness was found in bubbles and dandelion dust. I miss the old Us— innocent awe to once upon a times and loving strangers behind rose coloured glasses. I miss the old Me—bold and careless, naïve and weightless, I planned on changing the world over breakfast.

In a transient world, all is finite, and yet my heart is drawn to timelessness: beauty without brevity, endings with happily ever afters, reunions without goodbyes. My memories can console me with old affections, but they also haunt me with Today’s absence. I can’t decide whether I love or hate my capacity for nostalgia, but what I do know is that it was imprinted on my heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11) so that I would search far and wide for Eternity.

In my search for timelessness, I have discovered an eternal God—a Rock of Ages—who has existed from the very beginning. Unlike my yesterday’s built on sand, God is my firm foundation. In Him, there is a glory that will never diminish, a strength unchallenged by death, and a love that will never change. I don’t need to romanticise the past because no matter what Today holds, I can put my hope in a future ending that has already been written in permanent ink.

In fact, the One who placed Eternity in the human heart came into our world to fulfil its every desire. Reunited with my Creator, heaven promises me an eternity without tears, reunions without goodbyes, and a day when my wistful longing will be no more.

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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” – Revelation 21:3-4