Hope for the real future

Sigh... I have lots of book talk going through my mind but the day must be spent working on the garage again. It was amazing to me how a couple morning errands and then spending time in a doctor's waiting room in the afternoon made for a Tuesday which flew by!

I knew the stress test would take awhile so I took a book with me I had found at the tiny used book room in our local library. It is called Searching For Mrs. Oswald Chambers by Martha Christian. I was there so long the first page of the book was started... and the last. Since My Utmost For His Highest is one of two devotional books I have in my quiet time basket (the other being The Valley of Vision), I enjoyed learning more about the woman who actually assembled the book.

The story is told in the telephone conversations and letters between the author and the Chambers' only child (who was then in her 80s). Anyone who loves the work of Oswald Chambers would enjoy the book but it would also be good to give to one who is experiencing any kind of suffering. I'm so glad I had to wait on Christopher for another hour that day and spent the time perusing inexpensive books. :)

I received an e-mail from the husband of a blog reader who had passed away. Her name is Kathy and she wrote the Australian blog called Ambling Along. We make so many friends through blogs, perhaps because we truly do "read to know we are not alone".

I sent him, not scripture... but the following scene from C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle. I love this section of the book as Aslan has told the children they died in a train crash and they were now no longer in the Shadowlands but in real Narnia. Among the best description of Heaven literature offers...

It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass.

And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time there were somehow different -- deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know.

The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then he cried: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"

"The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after.

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at least they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Picture: Grandma's Garden by Robert Duncan; allposters.com