{"id":33642,"date":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/twinge-of-nostalgia\/"},"modified":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","slug":"twinge-of-nostalgia","status":"publish","type":"sermons","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/twinge-of-nostalgia\/","title":{"rendered":"A Twinge of Nostalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2005\/08\/18918.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n<p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> One wintry day the children put a\ntop hat on their snowman, and, in a spell of Christmas magic, he came to life.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Frosty the Snowman showed those children the time of their lives.\nWith Frosty, the sleds would slide farther than they&#8217;d ever slid before. With\nFrosty, they could play out all day long and not get cold in the snow. With\nFrosty, shopping was ever so much more fun than it was with Mom and Dad.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Then one day the weather got warmer, and along came a gust of wind\nthat blew off Frosty&#8217;s hat. The spell was broken and Frosty the Snowman had to\nhurry away. He waved goodbye and said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t you cry. I&#8217;ll be back again\nsome day.&#8221; The song continues, &#8220;(Thumpity-thump-thump,\nthumpity-thump-thump) Look at Frosty go \/ (Thumpity-thump-thump,\nthumpity-thump-thump) over the fields of snow.&#8221; <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The children in the song are like the disciples in the story. The\ndisciples also had been with someone who had made them feel more alive than\nthey&#8217;d ever felt before. With Jesus, life was a miracle a minute. With Jesus,\nthey could do anything their hearts desired. Yet one day Jesus was taken up out\nof their sight into heaven, and they were left to live with a burning memory\nand a future promise. He waved good-by and said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t you cry. I&#8217;ll be\nback again some day.&#8221; <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Many people\nhandle life by living in nostalgia.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The children in the song and the disciples in the story are like\nus on this the Sunday after Christmas. The magic is fading; the spell is\nbroken. Our loved ones are waving goodbye. The tree is going to come down soon,\nif it hasn&#8217;t already. The tinsel will go into the trash. The diet will begin.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Yet it is on this day, the Sunday after Christmas, that you and I\nare perhaps in the best position of any Sunday of the year to understand the\nsetting in which the Christian life takes place after the Ascension of Jesus\ninto heaven. For Christians, all of life takes place on the week after\nChristmas, after Jesus&#8217; first Advent and before his second Advent, between the\ntimes with our Lord Jesusa burning memory and a future promise.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">W. H. Auden has written a beautiful poem in which he speaks about\nthe tension of the &#8220;time being,&#8221; which, he says, is the most trying time of\nall.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now we must dismantle the tree, putting the decorations back into\ntheir cardboard boxes and carrying them up into the attic. The holly and the\nmistletoe must be taken down and burned. The children must return to school.\nThere are enough leftovers to be warmed up for the rest of the week, not that\nwe have much appetite, having drunk such a lot and stayed up so late. We\nattempted again this year to love all our relatives, and in general grossly\noverestimated our powers.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">But for the time being, here we are back in the moderate\nAristotelian city, where Euclid&#8217;s geometry and Newton&#8217;s mechanics could account\nfor our experience, and the kitchen table exists because I scrub it. It seems\nto have shrunk during the holidays. The streets are much narrower than we\nremembered. We had forgotten that the office was as depressing as this.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">To those who have seen the Child, however dimly or incredulously,\nthe time being is the most trying time of all. Auden says it&#8217;s hard to go to\nwork after Christmas, to get back into the old grind and pick up the same old\nmonotonous chores. It&#8217;s not as fun as it was on the 25th. He is also saying it\nis hard for us to live after the first Christmas but before the Second\nComingthe most trying time of all.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">On this day, which is the last day before the last decade before\nthe third millennium, let&#8217;s ask ourselves how we ought to be living between the\ntimesthis most trying time of all.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">A lot of people handle life by living in nostalgiaback into the\npast. The disciples in the story were smitten by an attack of nostalgia when\nJesus was taken away from them up into heaven. They wanted Jesus back. They\nwanted to roll back the clock. They wanted to push the rewind button. If Jesus\nhad put his Ascension to a vote of his apostolic session meeting, it would have\nbeen eleven to zip in favor of keeping Jesus right where he was. They wanted\nhim to stay.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">During the holidays we often remember precious bygone moments. I\nthink back to this last Christmas morning with my children around the Christmas\ntree. I wanted to freeze that time forever. I can hardly wait to get the\npictures back so I can relive those moments. See, I already have nostalgia for\nthis last Christmas.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">A certain Christmas song drips with nostalgia, tugs at our\nheartstrings, and even brings a tear to our eyes. You all know, &#8220;I&#8217;m\ndreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know.&#8221; Even\nSouthern California had to have snow for Christmas. In December we used to\nsquirt our windows with foam. It&#8217;s interesting that Irving Berlin wrote that\nsong about a white Christmas while lying next to a Hollywood swimming pool\nhomesick for the Christmases of his childhood.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Every Christmas Eve I make a phone call to my father in Southern\nCalifornia, where he&#8217;s very smug about the warm winter weather. I always call\non Christmas Eve and say, &#8220;Dad, eat your heart out. We have a white\nChristmas up here.&#8221; Then I laugh, because it&#8217;s a funny thing how I find\nmyself struck with a twinge of nostalgia for orange blossoms, smog, and\nfreewaysthe Christmases I used to know.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">How do you account for the spell nostalgia has over us? I think\nthe answer is in the word itself. Nostalgia comes from the Latin word <em>nostras<\/em>,\nwhich means home. Originally the word nostalgia meant a search for home.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Life is a search for home. You and I are the children of Israel exiled\nfrom the Promised Land, singing the Lord&#8217;s songs in a foreign land, yearning\nfor home. That&#8217;s another reason baseball is so central to the American\nconsciousness: first base, second base, third base, home. Why isn&#8217;t that fourth\nbase? Why is it home? Because home is the place you and I all leave from, and\nwe spend our whole lives trying to get back there.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Novelist Thomas Wolfe says you can&#8217;t go back home. A week from\ntomorrow we&#8217;re going to Southern California for a three-month sabbatical.\nPeople are telling me, &#8220;Vic, you&#8217;re not coming back to the same Los\nAngeles you left seven years ago. It&#8217;s more crowded; the pace is faster.&#8221;\nMany of my old friends have moved away. I can&#8217;t go back home. Time has moved\non.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">That is why two white-robed angels descend to these disciples as\nthey&#8217;re up there on the mountain looking into heaven. The angels come down and\nsay, &#8220;Snap out of it fellows! Men of Galilee, why do you keep gazing into\nheaven? Why are you wishing for something that used to be? Get a move on.\nThere&#8217;s a world out there to win for Christ. Come on down off this\nmountaintop.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">And friends, you and I need to listen to those angels today,\nbecause there is a dark side to nostalgia.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">During seminary Becky and I were privileged to spend a year living\nin a beautiful, 18thcentury colonial mansion just outside Princeton, New\nJersey. We were the guests of a wealthy widower whose wife had died ten years\nbefore after 30 glorious years of marriage. This man had never gotten over his\nwife&#8217;s death. He had a big bookcase filled with 30 leather bound scrapbooksone\nfor every year of their marriage. Every night after dinner, he would retire to\nhis den with a bottle of Scotch and spend the evening thumbing through the\nscrapbooks. Instead of making the most of his present, he wallowed in the pit\nof his past.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">If you are\nnot living in the present, you are not living anywhere.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Nostalgia is a wonderful servant, but what a horrible master!\nSomeone once said, &#8220;If you&#8217;re not where you&#8217;re at, you&#8217;re nowhere.&#8221;\nIn other words, if you&#8217;re not living in the present circumstances of your life,\nyou&#8217;re not really living at all. The apostle Paul once said he had learned to\nbe content whatever his circumstances.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">At this holiday season, let&#8217;s enjoy the freedom of sentimental\njourneys down memory lanenostalgia. Go ahead and relive the days of\nyesteryear, but then come back and be where you&#8217;re at. Because if you&#8217;re not,\nyou&#8217;re nowhere.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Maybe you are a widow or a widower remembering a storybook\nromance. My friends, your life isn&#8217;t over. We need you here in this church to\nbe all you can be for God here among us. Don&#8217;t be back there. Be here. Be where\nyou&#8217;re at.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">You may be a young person or a single person who can&#8217;t wait for\nlife to begin. Out there someday you&#8217;ll get that big job, or that special\nsomeone will come into your life. In the meantime, enjoy today the benefits of\nbeing a single person.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Maybe you&#8217;re someone who is disabled or someone who is undergoing\nthe health problems that come with aging. You don&#8217;t have to pine away at a pity\nparty. You can resolve today to live every day of your life for the glory of\nGod.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">If your marriage needs an overhaul, if you&#8217;re in a dead-end job,\nor even if you have a terminal diseasewhatever the post God has assigned\nyoube there today. Be present; serve the Savior.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">You and I already have a home. Our home is not in the past\nsomewhere. The home we have is God. In the majestic words of Psalm 90, we read,\n&#8220;Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.&#8221;\nSimply by dwelling in your true home, you can have all the power you need to\nface the most trying times. <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The\ndeparture of Jesus does not translate into his abandonment of us.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">The great news in our text is verse eight. There Jesus says,\n&#8220;But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.&#8221; You\nwill receive power. Jesus didn&#8217;t abandon us when he went off into heaven. Jesus\nmade a big promise to you and me and to the church.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">In John 16:7 he promised, &#8220;I tell you the truth: It is for\nyour good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come\nto you; but if I go, I will send him to you.&#8221; At Pentecost God sent his\nHelper who brought the power to the church to heal, to cleanse, to cast out\ndemons, to clean lepers, to dream the unthinkable, to do the impossible, and to\nlove the unlovable.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">How do we get this Holy Spirit down in our lives? He comes to us\nin our baptism. The apostle Peter said, &#8220;Repent and be baptized, and you\nwill receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.&#8221; And so, friend, if you are a\nbaptized believer this morning, you have God&#8217;s own Spirit living within you.\nYou have God&#8217;s power within youat your fingertips every day of 1990. It&#8217;s\nGod&#8217;s promise to you.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">About a year and a half ago, I bought a new navy blazer at\nNordstrom. It was one of those cases you may have gone through where you buy an\nitem of clothing and the more you wear it, the more you realize you don&#8217;t like\nit. My blazer wasn&#8217;t the right color, and to make matters worse, it attracted\nlint like it was going out of style. After wearing it pretty regularly for six\nmonths or so, I stuck it in my closet and didn&#8217;t wear it for a long time.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Tucked away in the back of my mind all the while was that famous\nNordstrom unconditional return policy. I thought, I&#8217;ve had this thing for a\nyear and a half. I&#8217;ve worn it lots of times, and there&#8217;s just no way they&#8217;re\ngoing to take it back. About two weeks ago I decided I had nothing to lose. I\npulled the blazer out, threw a lot of lint on it to make it look bad, and took\nit down to Nordstrom&#8217;s men&#8217;s department.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I walked in, and immediately I felt nervous. I felt like I was\nabout to pull a scam of some sort, but I played it straight. I walked right up\nto the first salesman I saw and gave this little prepared speech. I said,\n&#8220;I am about to put your famous unconditional return policy to its ultimate\ntest. I have here a blazer. I&#8217;ve worn it lots. I&#8217;ve had it for a year and a\nhalf. I don&#8217;t like it. It&#8217;s the wrong color, and it attracts lint like it&#8217;s\ngoing out of style. But I want to return this blazer for another blazer that I\nlike.&#8221; Then I stood there.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I couldn&#8217;t believe it. This guy with a big handlebar mustache just\nlooked at me and shook his head. He said, &#8220;For heaven&#8217;s sake, what took\nyou so long? Let&#8217;s go find you a blazer.&#8221; Ten minutes later I walked out with\nanother blazer that was marked $75 more than I paid for the one that I brought\nin. It was perfect for me. Didn&#8217;t cost me a penny.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">God is like Nordstrom. (Now, please do not go home and clean out\nyour closets of all the old stuff and go down to Nordstrom to say the pastor of\nFirst Presbyterian said you could get new stuff. I could get sued!) God is like\nNordstrom. God makes all sorts of outlandish promises that we cannot bring\nourselves to believe.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">When we get up enough courage or we&#8217;re desperate enough, we\nfinally take him at his word. He looks at us and he shakes his head. &#8220;For\nheaven&#8217;s sake,&#8221; he says, &#8220;what took you so long?&#8221; God promises\nus power to live.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">On the last day of this decade, let me ask you: If you knew power\nwas available to you so that you could not fail, what great dream would you\ndream for your life in the &#8217;90s? If you could erase fear of failure as a factor\nfrom your life, what dream would you dream for this church or for this\ncommunity? If you knew that the power was there from God and his promise was\ntrue, what risks would you take?<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">God doesn&#8217;t make promises he can&#8217;t keep, so step out in faith.\nTake him at his word. Expect a miracle.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">See the\nfuture from God&#8217;s perspective.<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">You know it might well take miracles for us to meet the challenges\nof the &#8217;90s. The problems we face out there in the &#8217;90s are not only big\nproblems, but they&#8217;re ticking time bombs.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I know we talked a lot today about the wonderful things happening\nin Eastern Europe. They&#8217;re certainly true. Once soldiers were walking around\nwith guns, and now they&#8217;re walking around with wire clippers snipping barbed\nwire all over Eastern Europe. Those who used to be oppressed by the government\nare now the government.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">There&#8217;s another side to that ledger. We have a drug problem that\nis getting worse and worse in this country and in our own city. Yakima has been\nstigmatized nationally in the media for our drug problem.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">We have the issue our own Mike Nixon raised as he addressed the\npresbytery recently. Mike quoted a report from the Hudson Institute, a\nprestigious think tank. The report says that by the end of the &#8217;90s, 1,500,000\nAmericans will have died of AIDS. The report also says 14.5 million Americans\nwill be infected by the AIDS virus.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Waiting for us in the &#8217;90s are the effects of all the pollutants\nthat we&#8217;re daily releasing into the atmosphere. And there&#8217;s a scenario that has\nthe planet warming, the polar ice melting, climates changing, oceans rising,\nand agricultural patterns shifting. With the food supply decliningand ours\nbeing an agricultural valleythis scenario is not a happy one to contemplate.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">In addition to the drug problem, in addition to the spreading of\nAIDS, and the environmental problems, we also have clouding our future the\nnational debt, Third World poverty, dissolution of the family, and other\nproblems looming out there. Futurists are calling the &#8217;90s the deadline decade,\nthe time when history will hang in the balance like no other time. What we do\nis going to set the course for our nation and our planet in the future. With\nall of the challenges looming out in the future, it&#8217;s easy for us to see the\ndanger of falling into despair.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">This past week Samuel Beckett died. Mr. Beckett, one of the great\nplaywrights of the 20th century, saw life as hopeless and utterly futile. Some\nof you have seen his great play, <em>Waiting for Godot,<\/em> which consists of\nnothing more than two hoboes sitting around waiting for a third bum who never\nshows up. Think again of the title of that play: <em>Waiting for Godot<\/em>.\nBeckett says God is the bum who never shows up.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I saw another of his plays entitled <em>End game,<\/em> which is\nsimply a blind paralytic lamenting his fate while his crippled, senile parents\ndie of despair in garbage cans. I mean we&#8217;re talking despair! <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Beckett would be right, were it not for the gospel of Jesus\nChrist. The apostle Paul said if we have hope in Christ only for this life,\nthen we, of all people, are most to be pitied.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">My friends, as we are on the threshold of a new decade, let&#8217;s\nstand firm and tall on the promises of God. On tiptoe, peer out into the future\nand see your life from the eternal perspective. Instead of nothing at all\nhaving significance, everything suddenly takes on significance. Our simplest\nand tiniest act of kindness has eternal consequences from the eternal point of\nview.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <strong>\n        <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Conclusion<\/span>\n      <\/strong>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Let me give you an example. This past Friday night our small group\nhad a little party for Becky and me because we will be leaving for three\nmonths. They gave us funny little presents and made a fuss over us. They made\naccusations, saying that even though I&#8217;m going away to study, they know me well\nenough to know that I&#8217;m not going to let study get in the way of my bicycle\nriding (which, of course, is a satanic lie). It was a nice time together.\nActually we felt very loved at that little Friday night party.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Now, on a world scale that event probably would not even register\nas a blip. It&#8217;s not even really worth mentioning in a sermon, except I am an\neternal being who is loved by God. I felt God&#8217;s love through the gestures of\nthe people in our small group. It makes me want to be more loving and to\nsomehow make others feel the way I was made to feel by the love of the people\nin that small group.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">From a temporal point of view, even great events are trivial\nbecause they get wiped away by time. From an eternal point of view, trivial\nevents are eternal. Our tiniest acts of love and kindness have spinoffs in all\neternity. Jesus was giving us the other side of that when he said, &#8220;I tell\nyou, in the last judgment men will be held accountable for every idle word they\nutter.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Everything you do in the &#8217;90s is going to have an implication for\neternity: every word of criticism or praise to a family member, every letter\nwritten or unwritten, the dinner out with an aging parent, the word of\nforgiveness given or withheld, the racist joke, the little white lie. I would\nask you, &#8220;Why not revolutionize your understanding of success in the &#8217;90s\nby looking at your life from the eternal point of view?&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">Every bit of the fame, power, and wealth you presently enjoy is\none day going to melt away like a snowman on a hot afternoon. All that will\nremain are simple acts of caring love. Those are going to go on and on and on\nand on forever.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I leave you with the wisdom of a little poem that was sent to us\nin a Christmas card from a longtime friend. It tells us what really matters\nfrom the eternal perspective. <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God to take away my pride, and God\nsaid no.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He said it was not for him to take away,\nbut for me to give up.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God to make my handicapped child\nwhole,<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">and God said, no, her spirit is already\nwhole. Her body is only temporary.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God to grant me patience, and God\nsaid no.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He said that patience is the by-product of\ntribulation. It isn&#8217;t granted; it&#8217;s earned.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God to give me happiness; God said\nno.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He said he gives blessings; happiness is\nup to me.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God to spare me pain, and God said\nno.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He said I must grow on my own, but he will\nprune me in order to make me fruitful.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God if he loved me, and God said\nyes.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">He gave me his only Son who died for me,\nand I will be in heaven some day because I believe.<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">I asked God to help me love others as much\nas he loves me,<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">and God said, &#8220;Ahhhh, finally! Now you\nhave the idea.&#8221;<\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\"> 1990 Vic Pentz <\/span>\n    <\/p>\n    <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\">Preaching\nToday Tape #88<\/h2>\n    <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\">\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.preachingtodaysermons.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"subhead\">www.PreachingTodaySermons.com<\/a>\n    <\/h2>\n    <p>\n      <span style=\"\" class=\"\">A resource of Christianity Today\nInternational<\/span>\n    <\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[306],"tax_ctp_authors":[3259],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[170],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[412],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_sermon_series":[],"tax_ctp_tags":[3441,3454,3471,3600,3766,3960,4091,4167,4603,4622,4903,5191],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-33642","sermons","type-sermons","status-publish","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-vic-pentz","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-ascension-of-jesus","tax_ctp_tags-attitude","tax_ctp_tags-baptism","tax_ctp_tags-christmas","tax_ctp_tags-despair","tax_ctp_tags-family","tax_ctp_tags-grandparents-day","tax_ctp_tags-hope","tax_ctp_tags-past","tax_ctp_tags-pentecost","tax_ctp_tags-security-in-god","tax_ctp_tags-trial"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Twinge of Nostalgia - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/twinge-of-nostalgia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Twinge of Nostalgia - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One wintry day the children put a top hat on their snowman, and, in a spell of Christmas magic, he came to life. 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