A hope to inspire us

We've now finished our short series on 'Constructing a Biblical worldview'. Notes from the last talk will be posted soon - or you can e-mail me if you'd like a copy.

As I have considered the hope we have as Christians, I have been reminded again just how much this informs my thinking and motivates my actions - but at the same, how little I understand it, how hard it is to picture a new heavens and a new earth. This is where poets and artists can help us.

One such was CS Lewis. In the last of the Narnia chronicles (The Last Battle), Aslan leads the children and the other victors in the battle through a transformed Narnia - the same place and yet somehow different. He calls them 'further up and further in', a refrain which is taken up by others as the closing chapters unfold. The book concludes with these words: 'All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.'

The hope we have is strong and sure, because of the resurrection of Jesus. But it's not intended to make us oblivious to the suffering of the world - quite the opposite. It should help us to see that our lives count for something. Even if they are only 'the cover and title page', they are part of that same story which goes on for ever.

And so we're called to live faithfully, in a world which 'groans as in the pains of childbirth' (as Paul puts it in Romans 8:22). We live between the times - between the death and resurrection of Jesus and the renewal of all things. We live in the overlap of two worlds - this world and the world to come. We've begun to taste heaven on earth - but it's not fully here yet. We live 'not at the high noon of life but at the dawn of a new day - at the point where night and day, things passing and things to come, grapple with each other' (Jurgen Moltmann).

Let's ask for discernment and courage to live faithfully and hopefully in these days.