Anchored in the Future
January 23, 2025 | Jim Angehr
One of my favorite recent books is Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s The Most Secret Memory of Men. It’s a book about the importance of books, the importance of memory, the travails of national identity and immigration, the horrors of war, and lots of other stuff.
Just a taste from Sarr’s novel for you today. At one point a character observes, “Nothing makes a man sadder than his memories, even when they’re happy.”
You can’t go home again, Mr. Peck.
That our memories inexorably make us sad must be a function of the fall, I think, specifically because whatever wonderful things we experienced then we can’t again.
Christ’s redemption, which follows the fall, turns that narrative upside down, since truly in Christ the best is yet to come. Even our gladdest memories are but echoes of heaven’s joys ahead.