The Danger of Looking Back

There is a comfort in looking back.

We all do it. There might be a song comes on the radio, or an old photo that shows up in your memories, and for a moment, it feels like life was simpler then. Maybe better back then. We think, “Things are complicated now. I don’t have the same people around me. I don’t have the stamina like I used to. Or the eyesight.” 

There is a word for this. It’s called nostalgia. Webster defines this as: A wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.

If it had a voice, nostalgia would whisper, “Don’t you wish you could go back?”

There is a danger with this: Nostalgia remembers the past, but edits it. It often rewrites it.

It paints old seasons in softer light.

It filters out the pain, the sin, the idolatry, the wandering.

It can make Egypt look like freedom.

In Exodus chapter 1– the people of Israel were ruled by a king who saw them as a threat in Egypt. He afflicted them with heavy burdens. (Exodus 1:11)

Verse 13 says he “ruthlessly made them work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service.”

Later he commanded that every Hebrew baby boy be thrown into the river and killed. 

Exodus 2 says that “the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. And God heard their groaning.”

In chapter 5, the Egyptian foreman gave them a heavier workload, beat them, stopped giving them straw and still expected them to make the same amount of bricks.

They cried out to the Lord, and He delivered them. He eliminated their enemies, set them free from bondage, brought them to safety and gave them cool water from desert springs and daily bread from heaven.

But after enough time went by, like it always does, nostalgia set in.

The Bible shows us how this sin can twist history. In Numbers 11, the people had become consumed by nostalgia. Here’s what they said in verse 4:

“Oh that we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. 6 But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

And the Lord’s anger was kindled. 

They were free… but they missed the menu of slavery. 

They looked back with longing and began to despise the very God who rescued them.

And church—don’t we do the same?

Sometimes we idealize a season from our past and convince ourselves that God was working more back then… and we fail to trust that He is working now.

Jesus warns of this. In Luke 9, He said:

“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

That’s not because the past is all bad. It’s because the past is not your hope. Of course, there’s a holy kind of remembering. Scripture often calls us to remember God’s faithfulness. Peter calls Pastors to “stir you up by way of reminder.” But biblical remembering always fuels present trust and future obedience.

The gospel calls us forward—to die to self and to walk in newness of life.

Paul wrote in Philippians:

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

There’s nothing wrong with flipping through an old photo album. But don’t romanticize Egypt. Don’t let longing for a season keep you from living by faith in the joy of the preset.

Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.