Dear Friends,
I had occasion recently to study again C.S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce. It’s a fictional story about Heaven and Hell (or perhaps Purgatory). The latter is a gray, grim town of boredom and monotony, and the people in it, now dead, are enslaved by every sin of their mortal lives: bitterness, self-involvement, cruelty, cynicism, greed, and so on.
Some people, including the narrator of the story, get on a great bus that takes them to Heaven. There, these “ghosts” are offered the choice to stay or to return. Heaven – or the “foothills” of Heaven, because we see only the land approaching it – is full of astonishing beauty. Heavenly guides, those who have reached Heaven or who are approaching it, are giant, shining, beautiful people. Each person who travels from Hell is met by one of these guides, someone known from the person’s mortal life, who explains Heaven.
The narrator, a ghost himself, and his guide travel toward Heaven, and along the way they witness encounters between other ghosts and their guides. For the ghosts, travel is difficult: the beautiful grass is too sharp – too real – and hurts their feet, and even an apple is too heavy to lift. Nearly all of those the narrator sees decide to return to Hell. Only one agrees to the painful redemption of his sin and continues on toward the heavenly mountains, now himself “real.”
Most of us have known people like this, people who fear the risk and cost of true wholeness and who choose to remain imprisoned in a life that never reaches its potential. This applies not only to addicts to various substances or to self-destructive ways of being and thinking, but also to many ordinary people who seem happy and productive, but who have not stretched themselves to realize the great potential God has given them to be his agents for good in the world.
At a clergy gathering some years ago, the group was asked the question, “How would your life be different if all perceived obstacles to the full exercise of your faith were removed?” I’ll never forget the response of one member of the group: “I would swing for the fence.” For those of you who are not baseball fans, he meant that he would work fearlessly and single-mindedly for God, always keeping his sights on the highest goal: the home run of being judged a “good and faithful servant.”
Distractions and outright fear keep too many of us who believe we are already “good Christians” from being all that we could be – from stretching ourselves toward the potential to be God’s agents in the world – serving others, sharing our faith, participating in the fellowship of the Body of Christ. Are you swinging for the fence?
Wishing you every blessing,
Mtr. TJ