A Moment to Write

My professor, Dr. Greenham, spoke well against reincarnation. He said, “We are made to go on.”

Lewis says something similar. Something of how time is an odd thing and that because we view time as odd that this points to our not being made for the temporal but the eternal. That our terms of how, “Time has flown,” or how, “Time has slowed down to a crawl,” are hints at our eternality. We are not made for reflection or the entropy of reliving parts of life, no, we’re made to go on. Now and now and now, we’re made to go on and on and on, but never made to go back to how things once were. God himself will not return us to the Garden, he, rather, will create a city for our dwelling. Lewis does well to say, “Further up and further in.” For indeed this is what we are created for.

Something of this is freeing. Nostalgia seems such a happy place until compared to reality, then we spiral into the hope of how things were, never thinking of how things are let alone how things will be. But if creation longs to be made new (Rom 8) then ought’n we too? Should we not long for the consummation of all things in the enveloping arms of Christ the King? Yet here Lewis’ voice plays in my ears once more, “News from a country you’ve never visited… echoes of a tune you’ve not heard… the scent of a flower I’ve never smelled.” Indeed our longing for completion is evident in our nostalgia, but we cannot go backward to gain it, we must go on.

I’m finding more and more that I truly only know two things, that I am a great sinner and Jesus is a greater Savior (as Newton would say it). My feelings betray me. My heart is deceitful. My mind is a labyrinth of these's and those's, this’s and that’s. Even reality holds little to know, because I’m certain that just behind it’s frail curtain a war rages - a war of cherubim and seraphim fighting devils and demons - of light defeating darkness for the Dawn has come. There is comfort in seeing my ignorance.

Andrew Peterson has a song that has been capturing me, “Carry the Fire.” He sings, “We dream at night of city descending with the Son in the middle and a peace unending… Where joy writes the song and the innocent sing them…” The more I learn, the more those same two things are all I know. In some form or fashion all things are tied to the sinfulness of my soul and Christ’s redemption.