Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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“Those Were the Days!” was the title of a song from the opening gambit of the 1970s TV show All in the Family. The song made hay on the concept of “nostalgia.” As that word is used today, it means fond recalling of earlier times. Nostalgically, some people hanker for “the good old days” that they often recall as being better than the current time, even if that was not necessarily the case.
Did you know, however, that “nostalgia” originally referred to a serious medical disorder? The word was coined in 1678 by a medical student to refer to “the pain a sick person feels because he is not in his native land, or fears never to see it again.” The disorder was a serious yearning for home that caused a significant disabling of the one affected by it. By the 1850s, however, what had been called nostalgia came to be seen as a form of melancholia or depression; and it eventually ceased to be a medical diagnosis in its own right.1
“Nostalgia” eventually entered the common language with its original meaning forgotten and its new meaning firmly attached; but it is worth noting that as originally intended, the word denoted a disabling condition. Even in its modern meaning, nostalgia can deter us from doing the present will of God and appreciating what he makes possible in our current circumstances.
That was part of the lesson the prophet Zechariah was commissioned by God to bring to the Jews who had returned to Judea after the Exile ended. It is also a valuable lesson for us.
