Longing for Narnia

Narnia is the beautiful C.S. Lewis created allegorical representation of the adventurous life of authentic interaction with God.

Oh, how we long for it.

It is the deepest longing of every deep soul, even though it is often (usually?) misidentified. We long for it because we are created for it. The longing itself is the rumor of its reality. Don’t cheat yourself by settling for the tawdry cheap substitutes offered by the flea markets of Babylon (this world). Dare to follow your deepest longings and decide that, no matter what it takes, you will find the real thing. Jesus is the way. And He gives the guarantee.

Seek and you will find.
Ask and it will be given.
Knock and it will be opened.

The door to your real-life Narnia.

This is from C.S. Lewis’ golden sermon, The Weight of Glory (slightly edited; e.g. Lewis doesn’t use the word Narnia, but, “our own far off country” — the meaning is the same):

“In speaking of this desire for our own Narnia I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you — the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Fantasy and Nostalgia and Romanticism; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and nostalgia and behave as if that had settled the matter. But all this is a cheat. The books, the art or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the nostalgia — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

I’ve caught the scent.
I’ve heard the echo.
I believe in the rumor of another world.

Come with me.

Come with us.

BZ

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The Weight of Glory is also the title for my prophetic message for 2007 which I will unveil at our New Years Eve event (10:00 – Midnight).