How often are you swept down the mountain by the avalanche of doubt, worry, fear, loneliness, and/or sorrow? Fighting to find hope while under the debris of life's daily troubles can be suffocatingly hard. It’s in these moments that we can lose perspective. Lose hope. Lose heart.

C.S. Lewis in his book, The Last Battle, the final installment in the Chronicles of Narnia series, displays a powerful metaphor in the closing pages. In a way that only he can do, C.S. Lewis reorients the reader to look beyond their present troubles in this world by setting their gaze upon a different country. A better country. A “deeper” country. A country that we will one day call home. But to fully grasp the weight of his words, we first must become a child and let our imagination run wild. Lewis writes, 

“It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this.You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different–deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean. It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all 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. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

What awaits the believer is far beyond true comprehension. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).This world is not our home and in a peculiar way we all know it deep down. Even the skeptics, the atheists, the prodigals, and the “nones” (look it up) know it. There is something in all of us that screams, “There is something better, we were made for something else!”  And indeed it is true. That country awaits, but right now our bodies groan, longing for this place. We were made to experience ultimate unending joy, but this world is not it. Our true home, our better, our eternal home is in the heavenly country. One day, we too like the unicorn will proclaim, “I have come home at last. I belong here. Come further in!”

Written by Dan Vangsnes