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Recently I was talking to a good friend about the power of nostalgia, remembering events that have moulded our lives.  As young people our eyes are firmly fixed on the future, hoping and dreaming of what we might be.  The middle years find many occupied with providing for families and careers, but as life goes on we have more time to reminisce. 

At the moment my wife and I are enjoying a holiday.  The scenery and wild life in Pembrokeshire is a wonderful backdrop to our time of rest and recuperation.  As well as enjoying the beauty of the countryside we visited two industrial museums.  “the Big Pit” and the Railway Museum at Didcot.  Both experiences were steeped in nostalgia for me.  It was my first time in a coal mine but the machinery, hard hats and safety procedures brought back memories of my early working life in the steel industry.  We visited the railway museum, what a blast from the past as we climbed onto the footplates of the engines and looked into carriages with their corridors and compartments.  All of the senses were brought into play.  Memories of journeys made by steam train, indeed the many hours that I spent as a child sitting on Darlington or York Stations with pen and train spotters book in hand.  Smelling the oily steam, hearing the sound of the whistle and what a joy to actually put my hands on the controls of working steam engines.  Seeing the firebox and feeling the heat all brought back boyhood dreams.  It is true that our past has a great bearing on our lives in the present.  I like to think of “the present” as a gift from God. 

  In the Bible there is a great feast celebrating the past and a thanking God for the present.  “The Feast of Tabernacles” is celebrated by Jews up to this day during September and October, a remembrance of a time hundreds of years B.C. when their ancestors spent forty years wandering in the dry arid desert between slavery in ancient Egypt and freedom in their promised land of Caanan.  Their supply of Water and food was always enough for the day.  Alongside this thanksgiving for the past is thanksgiving for the present as the harvest is recognised as God’s provision for today’s needs.  It was during this great festival that Jesus stood in the Temple in Jerusalem.  His words are recorded in the Gospel of John, his declaration of who he is and how he came into a spiritually arid world to bring peace, happiness and joy.  “Jesus shouted to the crowd.  If you are thirsty, come to me, if you believe in me come and drink for the Scriptures declare that rivers of living water shall flow from within.”  John 7 v 37 & 38 NLT