Longing for a time I’ve never lived in
‘Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.’ — Hebrews 11:16
‘If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.’ — C.S. Lewis
A few years ago, a friend introduced me to Nemo’s Dreamscapes, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
If you can’t be bothered to click the link, I’ll do my best to describe it to you.
Basically, it’s a YouTube channel that illustrates vintage scenes and mixes together old popular songs from 1930–1960 with natural sound effects you’d hear if you were right there in the scene.
Here are some examples of the video titles:
1940’s summer evening on a porch and it’s raining
it’s after midnight in l.a. and you’re a lone detective in a rainy diner
Stormy night at a 1950s Route 66 motel
I love old music (my 2025 Spotify Wrapped listening age was 86...), so I’m a big fan of this channel.
But what I’ve found fascinating is reading what people have said in the comments of these videos.
Things like:
I am not old, I only have 18 years... But this music makes me feel something in my body, makes me miss something that I never lived... I'm crying.
How do I feel nostalgia for something I didn’t grow up with??
I’m missing a time that I wasn’t in
Apparently, there’s a term to describe that feeling: anemoia.
It was coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (I know, sounds like a fun read) as a term to define a feeling of nostalgia for a time or a place one has never actually been to.
And it got me thinking that, in one way or another, all of us experience a kind of spiritual ‘anemoia’.
Longing for a place we've never been
At our deepest level, we sense that, somewhere along the way, we got lost.
Somehow, we know that this world isn’t all there is; that the life it offers isn’t the full one we feel like we were made for; and that the answer to our boundless desire for meaning, purpose and identity can’t really be found in the temporary things that dominate our attention and desire.
C.S. Lewis captures this so well in his book Mere Christianity:
‘If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.’
No matter how we try to fulfil it, we still feel that ever-present longing for something more—a longing that reaches far beyond our lives all the way back to the beginning, when everything was as it should be.
When we lived face to face with God. When we were at peace with Him, each other and the world around us. When pain, loss, injustice, disaster and death were completely absent from reality.
When everything was true and right and good.
But once sin had corrupted us, we were banished from that place—from our home in God's presence—and ever since, we have tried in vain to return there, rediscover what we once had, and finally satisfy the eternal ache in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
God is love—and so we look to our relationships to assure us that we’re worth something to someone.
God is peace—and so we look to mindfulness, self-care and experiences to give us that endless sense of tranquility.
God is joy—and so we look to our friends, families, interests and memories to fill us with that inexpressible and glorious sense of elation (1 Peter 1:8).
The list goes on. Whatever God is, we long and look for. As Augustine so famously put it:
‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’
But the only way we could ever find God was for Him to find us first.
So, He came to us as one of us. In Jesus, God stepped down into His creation to reveal Himself to us, reconcile us to Him, and allow us to recover what we had lost when we walked away from Eden.
Only Jesus can set our restless hearts at ease and satisfy our deepest longing.
Only He can bring us back to Him.
Longing for a place we’ll one day be
If you trust in Jesus, you have been brought to the place where you’ve always belonged.
Through Him, you are right with God again (Romans 5:1). Through Him, you are now in God—and through His Spirit, He is now in you (1 John 4:13). Through Him, you are now forever secure ‘in this place of undeserved privilege’, and you can ‘confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory’ (Romans 5:2).
And there, Paul touches on the new longing that every Christian has.
Through Jesus, our hearts’ yearning has pivoted from the past to the future. Our longing for the past—for a place we had never been and could never return to—has now become a longing for the future: for another place we've still never been, but one day will be.
A place without pain, loss, injustice, disaster and death.
A place where everything has been made completely new and right.
A place where we get to be face to face with God once again.
Home.
Every day, I want to be there more and more.
But until then, we must wait in that liminal space between Eden and eternity, the ‘now-and-the-not-yet’.
And while we wait, let’s keep our eyes fixed on our home we’re heading towards with every passing second. Let’s allow the hope of the indescribably good things to come surge through us and out into the world through the way we live our lives for Jesus. And let’s keep loving God and others with everything that we have.
Like all those people commenting on Nemo’s Dreamscape videos, I’m also longing for a time I’ve never lived in.
But I know that time will come, when we’ll finally see Jesus’ smiling face with our own eyes, and walk with Him into the place He’s prepared for us.
And friends, that time is closer than it’s ever been before!
Let’s keep pressing on with joy towards it.
Love,
Theo