I'm preparing the third of a series of three sermons on end-times and the Christian hope. (Do join us at 10.30 on Sunday if you're around). It's great to spend a few weeks thinking about how good God's promises are, and how wonderful the future will be.
I'll read a couple of excerpts from C S Lewis's final Narnia book, The Last Battle.
If you've never read it, do so. What follows below will only spoil one tiny detail in the story, and will only serve to whet your appetite.
Here is one of my favourite extracts (not one of the bits I'll read on Sunday), because it carries the hope that when we reach the perfect ending to which history is heading, we won't have to go back. It's the dream that you never have to wake from, the holiday you never have to return from. Or, as Lewis puts it, the school holidays that never end.
Then Aslan turned to them and said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”
Lucy said, “We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.”
“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”
Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.
“There was a real railway accident, said Aslan softly. Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
Add new comment