Every once in a while I ask myself, “Am I sane? Am I just imagining this awesome God who
exploded into my life with light and hope?”
I feel like Lucy in C. S. Lewis’s The
Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe.
One day in an old home in the English countryside she slipped into a
wardrobe while playing hide and seek and found herself in Narnia, a complete
and separate world from our own.
Understandably Lucy had trouble convincing her sister and two brothers
that Narnia existed – that is until several days later they too found
themselves in Narnia.
J. R. R. Tolkien communicated the same sense of experiencing
two distinct and separate worlds in his Lord
of the Rings trilogy. After Frodo
was wounded with a Morgul knife, an elf named Glorfindel found him in the wilds. Frodo’s fellow travelers saw Glorfindel as
just an ordinary elf – elves are ordinary in Middle Earth you know – but Frodo
saw him clothed with light. Later while
Frodo was recovering from his deadly wound in Rivendel he told Gandalf, “I
thought that I saw a white robed figure that shone and did not grow dim.” Gandalf explained, “Yes, you saw him for a
moment as he is upon the other side… for those who have dwelt in the Blessed
Realm live at once in both worlds.”
The Blessed Realm is to elves what heaven is to us. So, am I saying that I have spent time in
heaven? No, and yes. No, in the sense that I have not had an
out-of-the-body experience in heaven.
Yes, in the sense that I have experienced heaven, and continue to
experience it, while living in this world.
What is heaven? Simply put,
heaven is God’s home, it is where He dwells fully and completely, and it is where
all is ordered according to His will. In
my awakening I was introduced to God, and to this Blessed Realm. The more I experience Him, the closer I grow
to Him, the more fully I live in that Blessed Realm – all this while still
living as a flesh and blood human being.
I simultaneously live in two worlds.
And thus the longing in our hearts for that which we have (the vast majority of us) never even seen...
ReplyDeleteGreat article, Gary. Would you say what you are describing is believers in Christ living in the Kingdom of God/Heaven? Or is more like a description of the enjoyment of eternal life that has already begun for those of us who have accept Christ as our Savior? Or is it the anticipation of heaven that awaits us and the sense of "other world-ness" we are sometimes able to capture in the here and now? Or none of the above? Thanks for stretching our thoughts to a reminder that this world is not our home, we are simply passing through as sojourners.
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