The hard places of our lives often trigger memories of lighter days and longings to return there. We recall times when our world felt more like home. Hours spent swinging with childhood friends in the school yard. Prayers and laughter offered up around the family dinner table. Conversation and romance on the front stoop stretching well beyond sundown. We are sick for home. Yet this ache for the good ole days is not rooted in the sweetness of the past as we suppose. In truth, our past is most often no sweeter than our present; it's only buffed to a rosy sheen by selective forgetfulness. This ache then, this homesickness, stems from elsewhere. Could it be that we are most nostalgic for a home we have never known? Could it be that our ache has more to do with hope than memory? The people of God have always looked back on the goodness of God's past provision and found resource for faith in those stories. But those stories, no matter how good, are mere shadows of the provision to come. When Jesus looked back on time spent with his dear friend Lazarus, he wept. And then he imagined in hope, called Lazarus from the grave, and proved for all time that even death cannot prevent us getting home.