A question came up in a television quiz the other day that caught my attention. Apparently, there has been a recent survey of what people consider to be the best decade in Britain. At last, I thought, we will hear a sensible opinion from this sample of the British public and I will be encouraged that all is not lost.

Then the answer came: the 1960s were voted as best. What?! That decade where all those subtle changes of law began to take place, taking the nation on the slippery slope down? That decade where so-called ‘freedom’ among young people began to be expressed, freedom that has turned into licence and permissiveness?

I was hoping to hear that it was the 1950s - that decade of re-building after the war years when a generation of children grew up in a framework of safety and hope! That was surely the decade of unending sunny blue skies. But of course, we who experienced this are an older generation now and so the sample of people who gave their opinion in the survey would mostly not have shared this experience.

Yearning for the Best of the Past

We all have favourite memories and a point in time on which those memories pivot. I read a book recently in which the author reflected on the years prior to the Great War, generally focussed on what became the Edwardian era. The book was entitled When the lights went out. The author described how he ‘felt’ the change just as war was about to break out in 1914 and an era was left behind that has never returned. Of course, I don’t have an experience of that, so my nostalgia is rooted in the ‘50s!

No doubt we all reminisce on these matters sometimes, yearning for the best of the past. But in these momentous days in which we now live, we must be careful not to set our standards of expectation too low.

I am told that to the Jew the word ‘restoration’ means a return to how Israel had a special relationship with God through the wilderness years at the time of Moses. That seems a better benchmark to me, the desire for which echoes from the heart of the prophets:

Restore us, O God; cause your face to shine, and we shall be saved! (Psalm 80:3)

O Lord, revive your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:2)

The Best is Yet to Come!

But let us look higher still than the 50s, 60s, 1910s or even the wilderness years of Israel. Let us look back to the dawn of time and forward to the return of Jesus, no less. What was lost to Adam and Eve in their brief blissful life with God will be restored fully to Jesus’ family in the coming days, and it will certainly be infinitely better than any experience on this earth that any of us have had. That is what we are waiting for and that should be our meditation:

…that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began. (Acts 3:20-21)

Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. (Luke 21:28)

Author: Clifford Denton