Cyndi and I went to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader
this week.At the end, Aslan gives Prince Caspian the opportunity to go on into Aslan's country, beyond the wall of water at the end of the world.
Caspian approaches the upswooping water, feels it with one hand for a few moments, turns back to Aslan and replies, "I've spent too long wanting what was taken from me, and not what I was given. I've been given a kingdom." Much as he'd like to live with Aslan in Aslan's country, he returns to serve his people in Narnia.
We cried.
Reepicheep, our tender warrior mouse, asks Aslan if he can go up into the country...."it would be my honor to go there," he says. Aslan tells him no one would be more deserving; Reepicheep doffs his sword, says his goodbyes, and paddles up the water into the Land.
We cried harder.
Aslan tells two of the Pevensie people that they have accomplished all they can in Narnia and won't return...but will know him "by another name" in their own world.
We made it to the car and wept.
I've never been the "Oh, God, this world is so terrible, I just can't wait for heaven" sort of Christian. I like heaven, love life, and don't like the pain/death between the two. "Heaven" is ours to share with others now, I believe, and continue on into forever. But that scene really touches the ache in me for what God intended, what could be, what a life well lived really looks like. John Wimber called it living in the tension between the now and the not-yet. Peter Senge
called it creative tension.In The Fellowship of the Ring
, Frodo says, "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf replies, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."The Pevensies and the Hobbits were called out of their "normal" world. They learn that "normal" isn't all there is, that it isn't even "normal, we just call it that. They learn that there are real vistas and valleys, that God and glory are real, that Deceiver and disaster are real. Calm, normal, stay-in-the-queue life is only a shadow of Life that matters, for those who are called into it.
Three of my favorite verses can be compounded like a Life prescription: "This is the day the Lord has made; choose this day whom you shall serve; choose Life." Yes, and the ache seems to be part of it, maybe even part of the passion.
I can imagine the three of them sitting at an English pub in the 50s, or maybe in some heavenly hangout, smoking their pipes, and talking: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien...and Jesus. Maybe Wimber, too. We've been given a kingdom, and every day is a new adventure walking and serving in it. Of course it isn't "normal." Why should it be?
