“I have come home at last! This is my real country!  I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all of my life, though I never knew it till now.  The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.” - Jewel the Unicorn

This ranks with my favorite quotes of all times.   It stirs my soul.   Just as we laugh at jokes we can identify with, I love this so deeply because I see myself here.   I’m having one of those unsettled days.   Do you ever have them?   You find yourself sad for no reason... no not quite sad.   More of a sense of LONGING.

This quote is from C.S. Lewis’ “The Last Battle.”    It takes place as the few faithful Narnian’s have actually met their death in the final battle, and in walking through a great door, have found themselves in a new land, a country they have never been to, yet it is so familiar.   They begin to realize that the Narnia they had loved was really just a shadow, and THIS is the true Narnia, the place they were always destined for.

It is a picture of heaven.    Those senses of longing that seem to have no source and no resolution, the ability to be laughing and suddenly end with a sigh... I firmly believe it is because this is not our home.   We are living in the shadowlands, and our spirits long for our real country.

I was napping in the living room this Sunday afternoon but found myself feeling uneasy.   “Why am I sad, Jesus?”   It’s been a pretty good day overall, I stayed home with the kiddos from church but we had a good little church service of our own.   Shaina led the singing (Jesus loves me) and Kate was supposed to take the offering.   First she brought up her Bible to our piano bench pulpit and preached a little abstract sermon... something about Baby Jesus being so cute and getting a new pacifier when he was sad.   Three year old theology isn’t real deep. :)   Noah preached about Moses, and ended with the thought that if we are bad we get plagues but that if we are good we won’t.   My brother and sister were here for lunch, my husband’s hair is getting long and starting to curl the way I love it, my teething baby smiled and tried to chew on my chin... what more could a girl want?

And yet my heart is restless, longing.   Since I couldn’t figure out why, In figured I should ask the One who knows me better than I know myself.   In just a moment or so, that quote popped into my mind, and my heart smiled a sad smile of understanding.   Oh, yes!   I sometimes forget... this isn’t my country!   I’m a stranger here, at war with the accepted ideals and modes of operating.   My body bears the battle scars that Eden never would have allowed, and my citizenship is elsewhere.  I am longing today for heaven, for a glimpse of the One who understands things that boggle my mind, and for the rest from toiling that is a constant of life here on earth.

I don’t feel so sad now that I understand the source of the sorrow.   It isn’t one that is without remedy, but it does require waiting, trusting, and investing in my true home.   It is funny how cancer has a way of making you cling tighter to life and this world here... and yet in the same breath it makes you hold a bit more loosely and long a lot more for the rest and relief of heaven.  And maybe the understanding that will come to questions we have here.   Somehow, though, I don’t think the questions will be all that important in the light of eternity.   As they say in the true Narnia... we’ll be too busy going “further up and further in!”