The Great Story

One of the sisters I study with each week asked if this week we could talk about heaven.  I must confess, when she selected that topic I inwardly groaned a little bit.  First of all, I knew I didn’t have a lesson on this in my arsenal of studies I’ve developed.  Consequently, I knew it would take quite a bit of prep time, time being something that I seem to be a little short on lately.  Secondly, I know the topic comes with a lot of “we don’t really know”s.  However, I was so incredibly blessed this week as I prepared what we do know.  Blessed and encouraged–so much so that I began to wonder why I don’t reflect on this topic more often.  The more I meditated on the themes of the topic, the more the trivial and negligible annoyances of daily life became just that–trivial and negligible–making room for an abundance of joy.  If you haven’t examined exactly what the word has to say about heaven lately, I highly suggest you take a look for yourself.  While preparing, I also stumbled across one of my all-time favorite C.S. Lewis quotes.  The quote comes from the very end of the Narnia saga, as the characters’ earthly lives come to a close and they begin a new life.

The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.  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 last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.