Further Up and Further In!

As most of you know, The Chronicles of Narnia are my favorite series of books. (Spoiler alert!) The end of the last book, “The Last Battle” ends kind of like The Departed.

…everybody dies (except Mark Walberg).

Once everyone is dead, and all the old friends are reunited in what is called “Aslan’s Country – The TRUE Narnia”. In other words… Heaven.

You see, the Earth we live in, C.S. Lewis calls “The Shadowlands”. This life is nothing more than a shadow of eternal life. Look at your shadow. It is a glimpse of your own shape, but it is certainly not a very good, very accurate portrayal of what you really look like is it? Nowhere near as good as a mirror or picture. This is what C.S. Lewis used to try to explain the contrast between this life and the next.

So what did Aslan’s Country look like?

It was richer in color, it was like the difference between watching something in 1950’s black and white, and then seeing something in 2011 HD Blue Ray disc (ya, that’s right, it’s 2010 and I said 2011 that’s how awesome the difference is). The mountains where taller, grass greener, water sweeter, one could run and not grow weary, walk for ages and not faint.

What does this all have to do with anything?

(Waiver: to my Aussie friends, take no offence to this, this is more about being home than it does about not being other places, I would love to still be with ya’lls)

I have been home for a couple days now and I have noticed something…

The hills overlooking Santa Maria look bigger.

I know, it sounds odd, I’m sure it is not really the case, especially since if anything; due to erosion they should technically be smaller.

…but they look bigger.

Every time I look at the hills, they look larger than I left them. Even Mount Figueroa in the distance seems bigger.

It reminds me of the last two chapters of “The Last Battle”.

I think I now have a much better understanding of what C.S. Lewis was talking about when he described Heaven.

I am not saying the Central Coast IS Heaven… I am just saying, I have an even greater appreciation for it than I did before, and “I can only imagine” what Heaven will be like compared to all the beauty that I have seen here on a “corrupted” Earth whether in Kenya, Thailand, Micronesia, Central America, or even my own back yard here on the Central Coast…



…Heaven looks like it will be AMAZING!